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AMERICAN 
LITERARY 
READINGS 

With 

INTRODUCTORY HISTORY 
OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Edited 

WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, BIOGRAPHI- 
CAL SKETCHES, SOME THOUGHT QUESTIONS, 
AN OUTLINE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
AND A BRIEF ESSAY ON ENGLISH METRICS 



LEONIDAS WARREN PAYNE, Jr. 

Associate Professor of English in The tlniversity of Texas 

Author of "Southern Literary Readings" 

and "Learn to Spell" 



RAND McNALLY & COMPANY 
Chicago New York 



J^ 






Copyright, IQ17 
Bv Leonidas Warren Payne, Jn. 

Copyright, IQ18 
By Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr. 




©CI.A501638 



PART I 
INTRODUCTORY HISTORY 
OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



THE CONTENTS 

I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765 page 

General Characteristics 7 

Literature in the Southern Colonies 9 

Literature in the New England Colonies 12 

Annalists and Historians 14 

The Poets 16 

The Theologians 20 

Literature in the Middle Colonies 26 

General Reference Books' for American Literature .... 33 

Special Reference Books for Colonial Literature 34 

II. THE REVOLUTIONARY AND FORMATIVE PERIOD, 

1 765-1 800 

General Characteristics 36 

Historical Background 37 

The Orators 40 

Publicists and Annalists 42 

The Poetry 51 

Drama and Fiction _ 62 

Special Reference Books for Revolutionary Literature ... 67 

III. ARTISTIC OR CREATIVE PERIOD, 1800-1918 

Introductory Statement 70 

The New York and Middle Atlantic States Groups .... 71 

The Poets 72 

Essayists and General Prose Writers 83 

Novelists and Story Writers 85 

The New England Group 89 

The Rise of Unitarianism 90 

The Transcendental Movement 92 

The Rise of the Doctrine of Abolition 94 

The New England Historians 95 

The New England Poets 99 

The New Poetry in New England 102 

The New England Writers of Fiction 105 

The Southern Group 

Preliminary Survey 112 

Southern Orators 116 

Southern Poets 118 

Southern Writers of Fiction 123 

V 



vi THE CONTENTS 

The Central and Far Western Group page 

Preliminary Survey 134 

Western Poets 140 

The New Poetry in the West 143 

Western Writers of Fiction 148 

General Reference Books for Nineteenth Century American 

Literature 156 




RUINS OF CHURCH TOWER, JAMESTOWN 



INTRODUCTORY HISTORY 

OF 

AMERICAN LITERATURE 

I. THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765 

General Characteristics 

Historical Background. The colonial period of our 
literature extends from the first permanent settlement at 
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, to the calling of the Stamp 
Act Congress in 1765. It is the period of beginnings, the 
seedtime, as it were, for the later growth into flower and 
fruitage during the period of our independent national life. 
The first business of the colonists was to establish themselves 
on the new continent — to clear the forests and build homes, 
open up farms and pasture lands, construct roads and estab- 
lish means of transportation and communication, overcome 
the hostile Indian tribes, and organize all the forces for a 
new religious, social, and economic life. This constructive 
and formative work naturally consumed the interests and 
energies of the colonists so largely that little time was left 
for the development of literature. Moreover, there was no 
unity of government or of purpose in the earlier part of the 
colonial period. Different European nations had established 
colonies on the new continent, and a struggle for supremacy 
inevitably followed. The history of the colonial period 
gives us the details of this struggle for supremacy, a struggle 
which, after narrowing down to a fierce conflict between 
France and England, was finally settled by the treaty of 
Paris in 1763 in favor of England. 

Tendencies toward union. Naturally during the latter 
]3art of this struggle the English colonies were drawn into a 
closer union for defense against their common enemy, the 
French and their Indian allies; and this tendency toward 
union and self-defense very soon began to express itself in 
opposition to the restrictive and oppressive policies of 
government imposed upon the colonies by the mother 
country, England. 'The second large task of the American 
colonists, then, was that of consolidation and united action 

[7J 



8 History oj American Literature 

for the purposes of obtaining absolute independence from 
foreign domination. In 1765, two years after the conclusion 
of the Treaty of Paris, the Stamp Act was passed by the 
English Parliament, and within a few months a colonial 
congress, called the Stamp Act Congress, met in Philadel- 
phia to protest against this unjust method of taxation. 
This significant event may be said to mark the beginning of 
formal opposition to English sovereignty over the American 
colonies, and may be considered as marking the close of the 
colonial period. 

Nature of colonial literature. The literature of the 
colonial period is, as we might expect, given over largely to 
purely descriptive, historical, and theological writing. The 
new country, the strange kinds of life revealed here, and 
the incidents attendant upon the hardships and dangers of 
pioneer settlement furnished the first material for record. 
Geographical and descriptive narratives, and theological 
discussions, then, make up the great body of the written 
record of the period. Practically no purely artistic literature 
was produced. The little poetry that was composed was 
for the most part crude and bungling, or based on artificial 
foreign models. No purely imaginative literature was 
written diuring these strenuous times, and hence the written 
records which have come do\vn to us, important as they are 
from a purely historical or antiquarian standpoint, have 
little or no artistic value or purely literary appeal for modern 
readers. 

Method of treatment. In a brief survey of the principal 
literary products of the colonial period, we may conveniently 
consider them under three groups — namely, those in the 
Southern Colonies, in the New England Colonies, and in 
the Middle Colonies. We must constantly bear in mind 
the significant fact that during this period there was not 
one central government in any of the geographical divisions, 
but many and diverse governments in each of them. Hence, 
we need not look for a national or American spirit in our 
literature until the colonies shall have become united in the 
struggle against foreign domination. The early literature 
was quite as largely English as American, but we may call 
it American because it deals with American scene and his- 
tory, and because it was written by English settlers on 
American soil, and partially, particularly in the last half of 
the period, by writers born and educated in America. 



"The Colonial Period" g 

Literature in the vSouthern Colonies 

Captain John Smith: A True Relation, To the South- 
ern Colonies belongs the primary place in date, though not 
in importance, in our early literature. The first writer of 
note whose work may be called American in color and 
subject-matter was Captain John Smith (15 79-1631), a 
native of Lincolnshire, England. Moved by the typical 
Elizabethan spirit of adventure and daring, he ran away 
from home when he was fifteen years old and becaine a 
soldier of fortune. After passing through numerous perilous 
and romantic adventures in Europe, Asia, and Africa during 
the first ten years of his travels, he returned to England in 
time to join the Virginia Colony in 1607. The next year he 
sent back to England a long letter, which was published 
under the title A True Relation of Some Occurrences and 
Accidents of Noate as Hath Hapned Since the First Planting 
of the Colony. This pamphlet is now usually regarded 
as the first book in American literature. It contains an 
account of the first year in the life of the Virginia Colony, 
with much information about the new country, its inhabi- 
tants, its geography, and the hardships and dangers suffered 
by the colonists, particularly in their contact with the 
savage Indians. Naturally, Captain Smith is the hero of 
many of the incidents recorded. The account is written in a 
vivacious, picturesque, and forceful style, and the book is 
on the whole, perhaps, the most trustworthy of all the 
^vri tings of this remarkable man. 

Smith's other works. Among Captain Smith's numerous 
later publications may be mentioned his A Map of Virginia 
(161 2), A Description of New England (1616), New England's 
Trials (162 0-1622), and The General Historic of Virginia, 
New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). It is interest- 
ing to note that Smith wrote his Descriptions of New England 
before the first permanent settlement had been established 
in that part of America. The title of "Admiral of New 
England" was conferred upon him by the English govern- 
ment, but even though he proudly bore the designation 
during the remainder of his life, it amounted to nothing 
more than an empty honor. Only one of Smith's later 
works needs to be mentioned in more detail. 

The General Historic of Virginia, New England and the 
Summer Isles is an enlarged and doubtless more highly 



lo History of American Literature 

colored account than A True Relation, and was written 
long after Captain Smith had returned to England. In 
this later volume the account of Captain Smith's rescue by 
the intercession of the Indian princess Pocahontas is given, 
and the romantic nature of this incident, no mention of which 
is made in Smith's earlier work, A True Relation, nor in any 
other early narrative, has caused some critics to question the 
authenticity of the Pocahontas story and even the historical 
value of all Captain Smith's writings. In fact, this work is 
so unreliable that nothing in it can be accepted unless sup- 
ported by other evidence. We shovdd not hesitate, however, 
to give John Smith credit for the exceedingly interesting 
and informing nature of his material, and for the vivid and 
dramatic style in which he has presented it. While he 
cannot in any sense be classed as a great writer, he unques- 
tionably will be remembered as the first Englishman who 
successfully made literary capital of American scene and 
life. 

William Strachey. Another early work remarkable for 
its vivid and powerful prose description is a True Reportory 
of the Wrack and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, 
upon and from the Hands of the Bermudas (1610). The 
expedition under Sir Thomas Gates arrived at Jamestown 
in 1 6 10 after a stormy voyage and a shipwreck on the Ber- 
muda Islands. William Strachey, who seems to have been 
secretary of the expedition, wrote this remarkably realistic 
account of the sea storm and the wreck, and it is not at all 
to be wondered at that Shakespeare made use of some of the 
picturesque and dramatic phrases of this narrative when he 
came to describe the storm at sea in The Tempest, written 
about 161 1. 

George Sandys. The first ambitious effort in poetical 
composition and scholarly attainment in America must be 
accredited to George Sandys (i 577-1644), who, in the face 
of almost insuperable obstacles in the newly settled con- 
tinent, made a rimed translation of fifteen books of Ovid's 
Metamorphoses, and published it in London in 1626. It is 
a noteworthy fact that this translation was made in the 
heroic couplet, the vehicle afterward widely used by Dryden, 
Pope, and their followers, in the translations and satirical 
poems of the classical age in English literature. Both 
Dryden and Pope read Sandys' translation, and commented 
favorably upon the American colonist's work. Professor 




CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH 

From the margin of his map of New England in "A Description of New England," 
London, 1616, which now hangs in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
in Boston. 



"The Colonial Period" ii 

Moses Coit TyJer in his History of American Literature, 
Colonial Period {idoT-iyds), speaks of Sandys' translation 
as "The first monument of EngHsh poetry, of classical 
scholarship, and of deliberate literary art reared on these 
shores." 

"Epitaph on Nathaniel Bacon." The single noteworthy 
original poem that has come down to us from the Southern 
Colonies is the "Epitaph on Nathaniel Bacon," composed 
by some unknown person. This dirge was discovered in the 
Burwell Papers, so called from the name of the family in 
whose possession they were found and by whom they were 
preserved in King William County, Virginia. The manu- 
scripts dealing with the so-called Bacon's Rebellion (1676) 
were revealed about a century after the stirring events which 
they chronicle. The "Epitaph" is said to have been written 
by Bacon's body servant. This might well have been true, 
for in those days many white persons of excellent education 
were indentured to service to the richer colonists. Professor 
Tyler speaks enthusiastically of this noble dirge, saying that 
it has energy, and a mournful eloquence, reminding one of 
the commemorative verse of Ben Jonson.^ 

Southern chroniclers. In the latter part of the colonial 
period, several worthy chroniclers arose in the Southern 
Colonies, notably Robert Beverly, author of The History 
and Present State of Virginia (1705) ; William Stith, president 
of William and Mary College at Williamsburg, Virginia, 
and author of the History of the First Discovery and Settle- 
ment of Virginia (1747); and Colonel William Byrd (1674- 
1744), a highly cultured and wealthy Virginia planter, 
author of the History of the Dividing Line Run in 1728. 

William Byrd. Colonel Byrd deserves special mention 
as an example of the Cavalier type in the Southern Colonies, 
for he is thoroughly typical of the high-class Virginia gentle- 
man of the pre-Revolutionary times. He was well educated 
both by travel and study, and he collected around him all 
the evidences of comfort and culture that wealth and social 
standing could at that time attract to American shores. 
His library was perhaps the largest in America during 
colonial times. His daughter, the accompHshed Evelyn 
Byrd, one of the most celebrated beauties of her day, not 

1 Moses Coit Tyler, History of American Literature, Colonial Period 
(1607-1765), page 18. The "Epitaph" has been frequently reprinted in 
collections of American verse. 



12 History of American Literature 

only in the colonies but in England as well, shared with him 
the pleasure he took in collecting books, prints, and other 
evidences of culture. The extensive correspondence and 
methodical journals of Colonel Byrd, though not published 
in his own day, give evidence of the influence of the select 
literature with which his wide reading made him familiar. 
Like his Cavalier ancestors, Colonel Byrd cultivated litera- 
ture as an elegant pastime rather than for the fame which 
publication would have brought him. His literary remains 
lay in manuscript until 1841, and it was not until the begin- 
ning of the twentieth century that his productions were 
given to the public in carefully edited form. Since his 
work was first published, Colonel Byrd's reputation as an 
entertaining writer and an excellent prose stylist has grown 
to such proportions that he is now placed in the first rank 
of colonial prose writers. His History of the Dividing Line 
Run in 1^28 is a record of his experiences with a surveying 
party as a member of the commission appointed to settle 
the disputed boundary line between North Carolina and 
Virginia. Naturally, the Colonel was more or less a partisan 
for Virginia, and his sprightly and vivacious descriptions of 
the dismal North Carolina swamps and especially his witty 
and satiric portraits of the uncultured North Carolinians, 
still provoke lively mirth in all readers who dip into his 
narrative. 

Literature in the New England Colonies 

Character of the Puritans. Both the Plymouth (1620) 
and the Massachusetts Bay (1630) colonies were settled by 
the Puritans, or as they are usually denominated, the 
Pilgrim Fathers. The Puritans were so called because they 
demanded a purer form of religion than was afforded by the 
established church of England. They insisted that the 
will of God, as revealed through the Scriptures and the 
consciences of men, should be the supreme authority in all 
religious matters. Hence, they were opposed to all legally 
established church forms and religious conventions. They 
held to the Calvinistic system of theology, proclaiming that 
man was created with full freedom of will, and that after 
the fall of Adam, God had provided a means through the 
substitution of Christ, whereby the chosen ones might be 
saved from the penalties of sin and received up into heaven. 
The whole purpose of man's life on earth was, first, to make 



''The Colonial Period'' 13 

his salvation sure; and second, to subdue the body in order 
to prepare the soul for the joys of heaven. All the frivoli- 
ties and pleasures of life ought to be suppressed, they 
believed, and all men ought to engage in religious activities, 
such as reading the Scriptures, attending divine worship, 
and praising God and praying continuously, and so strive in 
every way to bring the human will into harmony with the 
will of God. This austere and repressive attitude toward 
life dominated the temper of the early Puritan settlers in 
Massachusetts, and in 'it we shall find the key to the inter- 
pretation of our earl}^ literature in the New England colonies. 

Their self-dependency. The Puritans took life seriously. 
They kept fuller and more trustworthy records of their 
history than did the Cavaliers in Virginia. Forced out of 
England because of their non-conformity in religious matters, 
they were more or less cut off from the mother country and 
made almost wholly self-dependent. They developed their 
own system of education, founding Harvard College as early 
as 1636 and establishing a system of public education at a 
similarly early date. They refused to read English books and 
periodicals, and presently began to supply their own intel- 
lectual needs by newspapers, almanacs, and home-made text- 
books. In 1639 the first printing press in this country was 
set up at Cambridge, and on it the Bay Psalm Book was 
printed in 1640. Their historians kept painstaking and 
extensive records, their preachers wrote many long sermons 
and theological works, their leaders enacted many repressive 
and restrictive laws, and as a whole the New England 
settlers soon developed a more or less complete and inde- 
pendent system of social and religious life. 

Homogeneity of their literature. Moreover, the Puritans 
were more alike in their ideals and more unified and deter- 
mined in their purposes than were the Southern colonists. 
They planned a sort of ideal government with God as the 
invisible ruler, and they desired to carry out their plan far 
away from England on the free shores of the wild, new 
continent. They wished to attract recniits from England, 
however, and so they were constantly advertising among 
the dissenters in England the advantages of their form of 
worship and their absolute freedom from English domination 
on the distant American shores. In reality there was no 
true religious freedom offered, however, for the Puritans 
wanted everybody in their colony to submit to their religious 



14 ' History of American Literature 

ideas, as is clearly shown by their severe treatment of the 
Quakers, Roger Williams, and the Episcopalians. The 
dominant ideal of the New England Colonies, then, was 
based on their Calvinistic theology. Their histories are 
largely the record of their religious activities; the main 
body of their literature is made up of sermons and theologi- 
cal works; and what little poetry they produced was also 
written in their characteristic tone of Calvinistic theology, 
as is shown in "The Day of Doom" by Michael Wiggles- 
worth, as an example of the worst, or in "Contemplations" 
by Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, as an example of the best. 

Quality of their literature. The quality of this sort of 
literature is not very high if judged on purely esthetic 
grounds. There is no real poetry, no drama, no purely 
imaginative literature; and except for its historical, theo- 
logical, and antiquarian interest, and its revelation of the 
religious, political, and social life of our Puritan ancestors, 
there is little in the whole colonial period that needs detain 
the young student of literature. Comparatively, however, 
the works produced in New England are perhaps more 
important than those produced in the other colonies. For 
our present pm-poses we may speak of the New England 
authors in three groups, the chief annalists and historians, 
the most notable verse makers, and the great preachers and 
theologians. 

ANNALISTS AND HISTORIANS 

William Bradford. Among the New England annalists 
the first name is that of Governor William Bradford (1590- 
1657). He came over with the Plymouth colony in 1620, 
and for a number of years kept a careful journal of the early 
activities of the settlers. He was assisted in this work by 
Edward Winslow, another prominent member of the colony, 
and in 1622 there appreared in London a part of their 
journal, which became known as Mourfs Relation, so called 
because the prefatory note was signed by "G. Mourt." 
Bradford's great work. The History of Plymouth Plantation, 
was begun in 1630 and continued through twenty years. 
It lay in manuscript for over two hundred years, during 
which time it had quite a romantic series of travels, landing 
finally in the library of the Bishop of London and remaining 
there many years before it was printed in the Annals oj the 



"The Colonial Period" 15 

Massachusetts Historical Society about the middle of the 
nineteenth century. The manuscript was given to the . 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1896, and it is now 
carefully guarded as one of the chief historical treasures in 
the possession of the Massachusetts State Library. 

John Winthrop. Governor John Winthrop (i 588-1 649), 
of thC' Massachusetts Bay Colony, also kept a careful 
journal, beginning his record with the sailing of his vessel 
from England in 1630 and continuing it to the end of his life. 
This journal also lay in manuscript until the nineteenth 
century, when it was published under the comprehensive 
title of the History of New England. There is some 
excellent prose in this extensive history, notably the elaborate 
and sound definition of true liberty ; but the work as a whole 
is, like Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, far more 
interesting as a source book of historical facts than as a 
product of literary value. As a sample of the' historical 
and theological prose style of the colonial period we may 
quote Winthrop 's paragraph on the nature of liberty. 

For the other point concerning Hberty, I observe a great mistake 
in the country about that. There is a twofold Hberty, natural (I mean 
as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common 
to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man as he stands in 
relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists: it is a liberty 
to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent 
with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just 
authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men 
grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes 
sumiis licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, 
that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to 
restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal: 
it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between 
God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and con- 
stitutions, amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end 
and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty 
to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to 
stand for with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, 
if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority, but a distemper 
thereof. This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjec- 
tion to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ 
hath made us free. ... If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, 
and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the 
least weight of authority, but will murmur and oppose, and be always 
striving to shake off that yoke; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such 
civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you 
quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over 
you, in all the administrations of it, for your good. Wherein, if we 
fail at any time, we hope we shall be willing (by God's assistance) 



1 6 History of Amcricrn Literature 

to hearken to good advice from any of you, or in any other way of God ; 
so shall your liberties be preserved, in upholding the honor and power of 
authority amongst you. 

Judge Sewall's Diary. Among the numerous later 
annalists, Judge Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) should receive, 
special mention. He was brought to America when he was 
about nine years old, and hencche may be said to haye been 
reared and chiefly educated in the Massachusetts colonies. 
He was a man of exemplary character, being esteemed as a 
typical Puritan gentleman of his time. He accumulated 
considerable wealth, became first a minister and then a 
judge, and finally rose to be the chief justice of the colony. 
He took part as one of the seven judges in the persecution 
and condemnation of the Salem witches, but he afterward 
publicly acknowledged his error in so doing and prayed God 
to forgive him for this grie\^ous sin. He kept a fairly com- 
plete Diary from 1673 to 1729, and it is upon this that his 
fame chiefly rests. His minute records of the political, 
religious, and social life of his times makes a veritable mine 
for the students of the history of this period. The quaint 
reference to the punishment of his children for playing at 
prayer time and eating during the "Return Thanks," and 
especially his naive account of his courtship of several 
estimable ladies, make entertaining reading even in the 
present day. The value of a personal diary must be esti- 
mated on the frankness and fullness of the picture of life 
presented rather than upon formal literary excellences; as a 
diary Judge Sewall's account ranks among the best of its 
kind. Another work written and printed by Judge Sewall 
in Boston, a pamphlet entitled The Selling of Joseph; A 
Memorial (1700), attacks the custom of buying and selling 
slaves in the Massachusetts colony; this tract is now remem- 
bered as the first anti-slavery document produced in America. 

THE POETS 

The Bay Psalm Book. There was little or no poetry 
worthy of the name in the New England colonies. The 
Puritan mind was averse to works of pure imagination in 
any form, and verse was only tolerated as a handmaiden of 
religious instruction and admonition. A few stiff eulogies 
in the form of memorial verses have survived in New Eng- 
land, but they are hardly worth reading. The Bay Psalm 
Book is a typical example of the crude and almost barbarous 



''The Colonial Period'' 17 

literary taste of the early divines. A number of the leading 
ministers, among them Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, 
and John Eliot, were appointed to translate the Psalms for 
use in the song service of the churches. The volume was 
issued from the Cambridge printing press in 1640, and thus 
has the distinction of being the first important book pub- 
lished within the present limits of the United States. The 
following sample of the awkward and ineuphonious trans- 
lation will illustrate what the New England minister accepted 
as poetry: 

23 A PSALME OF DAVID 

The Lord to mee a shepheard is, 
want therefore shall not I. 

2 Hee in the folds of tender-grasse, 

doth cause mee downe to lie: 
To waters calme me gently leads 

3 Restore my soule doth hee: 

he doth in paths of righteousnes : 
for his names sake leade mee. 

4 Yea though in valley of deaths shade 

I walk, none ill Tie feare: 
because thou art with mee, thy rod, 
and staffe my comfort are. 

5 For mee a table thou hast spread, 

in presence of my foes: 
thou dost annoynt mj'^ head with oyle, 
my cup it over-fiowes. 

6 Goodnes & mercy surely shall 

all my dayes follow mee: 
and in the Lords house I shall dwell 
so long as dayes shall bee. 

When compared with the finely modulated prose of the 
King James version of the Bible (161 1), this sort of doggerel 
becomes ridiculous. 

Anne Bradstreet. There is one New England writer, 
however, who possessed considerable poetical talent, a 
woman, i\.nne Bradstreet, known as the "tenth Muse." 
She was born in England, but came to America with her 
father, Thomas Dudley, who afterwards became Governor of 
Massachusetts, and her husband, Simon Bradstreet, who also 



1 8 History of American Literature 

became governor of the colony. She was a woman of fine 
qualities, making her personality felt in the life of the colony, 
as well as in her own household of eight children. With 
all of her other duties, and in spite of ill health brought on 
because of the exposure and hardships incident to colonial 
life, she found time to compose a considerable volume of 
poems. Her manuscripts were carried to England, and in 
1650 they were published under the title, The Tenth Muse 
Lately Sprung up in America: Or Several Poems, Compiled 
with Great Variety of Wit and Learning. We are pleased 
to know that the lady is not herself responsible for this 
aspiring and self-laudatory title, but that her London pub- 
lisher thus elaborated it to meet the demands of his trade. 
There are included in this volume five long poems in heroic 
couplets on the four elements, the four humors in man, the 
four ages of man, the four seasons, the four monarchies;^ 
and several other shorter poems, among them "Contempla- 
tions," which is considered her best production. The 
eighth and ninth stanzas from this last-named poem will 
show, in spite of certain strained conceits, that Anne Brad- 
street took real delight in nature, that she was genuinely 
sincere in her moral sentiments, and that she had a fairly 
good ear for rhythm. 

Silent alone, where none or saw, or heard, 

In pathless paths I lead my wandring feet; 

My humble Eyes to lofty Skyes I rear'd 

To sing some Song, my mased Muse thought meet. 

My great Creator I would magnifie, 

That nature had, thus decked liberally 

But Ah, and Ah, again, my imbecility! 

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing. 

The black clad Cricket bear a second part, 

They kept one tune, and plaid on the same string. 

Seeming t© glory in their little Art. 

Shall Creatures abject, thus their voices raise? 

And in their kind resound their makers praise: 

Whilst I as mute, can warble forth no higher layes. 

Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom." The most character- 
istic Puritan poem, and the most popular one of its time if 
we may judge from its numerous editions, was "The Day 

'Some one has called these five poems "The Quintet of Quarteriiions." 



"The Colonial Period" 19 

of Doom, or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last 
Judgment" by Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). Judged 
by the standards of his own times, Wigglesworth was a great 
poet, but the modem world has practically reversed this 
decision. In colonial homes "The Day of Doom" was 
circulated perhaps more widely than any other poetical 
composition. Children were required to memorize long 
passages from it in order to ground themselves in the Cal- 
vinistic doctrines elaborately rimed into the two hundred 
and twenty-four stanzas of this so-called poem. To the 
modern mind theological doctrines are not, in the first place, 
suitable material to be put into a poem; and in the second 
place, a double ballad stanza with jingling internal rime is 
not a fit vehicle in which to express dignified thought or 
religious emotion. A brief sample of this sort of theological 
argument in ballad meter will probably satisfy most modern 
readers.^ The "Plea of the Infants" is the title of the 
section which deals with the problem of the damnation of 
those who die in the innocence of infancy. The children 
make a plea to the Lord for mercy, arguing that since they 
were immediately carried "from the womb unto the tomb" 
they had no chance either to sin or repent; they urge that 
Adam's sin should not be visited on them, since they had 
neither the power nor the opportunity to resist or prevent 
his action. God replies in a long argument and concludes 
as follows: 

"You sinners are, and such a share 

as sinners, may expect; 
Such you shall have, for I do save 

none but mine own Elect. 
Yet to compare your sin with their 

who liv'd a longer time, 
I do confess yours is mucla less, 

though every sin's a crime. 

A crime it is, therefore in bliss 

you may not hope to dwell; 
But unto you I shall allow 

the easiest room in Hell." 
The glorious King thus answering, 

they cease, and plead no longer; 
Their Consciences must needs confess 

his Reasons are the stronger. 

1 Professor Percy H. Boynton thinks that Wigglesworth consciously 
wrote his poem in this jingling measure to attract popular attention, and 
argues that this poet was capable of a higher strain, as is proved by certain 
lines written in heroic couplets and printed at the end of "The Day of 
Doom." See American Poetry, p. 600. 



20 History of American Literature 

THE THEOLOGIANS 

Theological writings. While the historical records and the 
poetical productions may be more frequently consulted by 
modern readers, there is no doubt that it is the theological 
literature — the sermons, philosophical and religious tracts, 
and ecclesiastical histories — that' most characteristically 
represents our Puritan forefathers. As literature, most 
of these productions are now worthless, but as representative 
products of the Puritan mind and temper, they are invalu- 
able. A long list of influential divines with their extensive 
religious publications might be compiled, but we can get a 
fairly adequate conception of the theological writing of the 
time.by considering the work of the most prominent of them. 
Nathaniel Ward's "The Simple Cobler of Agawam." 
Before taking up the theological works proper, however, 
we may consider briefly one peculiar prose composition called 
The Simple Cobler of Agawam (1647). Nathaniel Ward, 
the author of this curious book, was an Englishman who 
came to America under the persecutions of Laud and became 
a Puritan minister at Agawam (later called Ipswich) in 
what is now Essex County, Massachusetts. The Simple 
Cobbler was published in London after Ward's return to 
England and was really addressed to English rather than 
American readers. It is a prose satire, sprinkled here and 
there with heroic couplets, attacking religious toleration, 
fashions in dress, and the general political conditions of 
the times. There is no great literary merit in the work, 
but it struck an original note and attracted considerable 
attention in its day, passing through four editions within 
the first year of its publication. Because of his satiric vein, 
his peculiar verbal coinages, and his original phraseology, 
Ward has been called an early American Carlyle, but he is 
perhaps quite as much an early English Carlyle, and besides 
he hardly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with 
the great nineteenth-century English writer. 

The Mather family: Richard Mather. The Mather family 
was by far the most distinguished and influential group of 
ministers in New England. A famous old epitaph written 
for the tomb of the first representative of the family who 
came to America, reads 

Under this stone lies Richard Mather 
Who had a son greater than his father, 
And eke a grandson greater than either. 



''The Colonial Period" 21 

This Richard Mather, a non-Conformist minister in England, 
was forbidden to preach and practically forced to emigrate 
to America. He settled at Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 
1635, and at once took rank with the influential ministers 
of the colony. It is said that out of his loins sprang more 
than fourscore preachers. 

Increase Mather. All four of Richard Mather's sons be- 
came ministers, and of these, the youngest. Increase Mather 
(1639-1723), became the most prominent man of his time. 
He was graduated from Harvard College and became a 
preacher at once, but decided to go abroad for further study 
at Dublin before beginning his active ministry. Upon his 
return he married the daughter of John Cotton, another 
famous Puritan divine, and thus united in his distinguished 
offspring. Cotton Mather, two famous New England families 
of preachers. He became minister of the old North Church 
in Boston, and in addition to his ministerial duties, which 
were later shared by his son Cotton, he was called to the 
presidency of Harvard College. In this double position of 
preacher and college president, his influence was enormous. 
He was not only the most distinguished minister and edu- 
cator of his time, but the most powerful force in the political 
life of the colony. He was sent to England to renew the 
provisions of the royal charter under King William III, and 
his success m obtaining favorable modifications in the 
interest of the colony is said to mark him as a skilful states- 
man. The only work of his that is now usually referred to 
by literary historians is his Essay for Recording of Illus- 
triotis Providences (1684), a work eminently characteristic of 
our Puritan ancestors in their credulit}' respecting super- 
natural occurrences. 

Cotton Mather. If Increase Mather is reckoned as a 
voluminous writer with his hundred and fifty publications, 
what shall we say of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) with his 
nearly four hundred books, tracts, and sermons? The 
younger Mather was exceedingly precocious in his religious 
and literary development. He confesses that he began to 
engage in prayer from the time that he learned to speak, and 
he spent the greater part of his life poring over his books 
and his own compositions — -all more or less of a religious 
character. He was graduated from Harvard College when 
he was seventeen, and even then was looked upon as a mas- 



2 2 History of American Literature 

ter in the whole realm of knowledge. He had an enormous 
capacity for languages, being able to put his compositions 
into five or six different foreign tongues. His literary output 
seems almost superhuman. On an average, he put forth 
something like a dozen publications a year, besides keeping 
innumerable fasts, spending many hours in private prayer, 
attending public services of all kinds, preaching' hundreds of 
sermons, and faithfully attending to the numerous other 
pastoral duties of his charge. One of his books. Memorable 
Providences Relating to Witchcraft, was unfortunately quoted 
as an authority during the later cruel persecutions at 
Salem. He is not to be so greatly blamed for his connection 
with witchcraft, however, as his detractors have maintained, 
for he was but inquiring in a careful manner into a com- 
monly accepted mystery of his time, and his personal atti- 
tude toward the unfortunate persons who were thought to 
be "possessed" was eminently kindly and humane. 

"Magnolia Christi Americana." The work upon which 
Cotton Mather expended his best talents, the magnum opus 
of Puritanism in America in fact, was his Magnolia Christi 
Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of New England 
(1702). It was composed in seven books containing (i) 
the antiquities or the founding of the colonies; (2) the lives 
of the governors; (3) the lives of sixty famous divines; (4) an 
account of Harvard College and the lives of its eminent 
graduates; (5) the ecclesiastical history of the churches of 
New England; (6) a record of many illustrious providences; 
and (7) the various wars of the Lord, or the conflicts of the 
church against spiritual adversaries, Indians, and the like. 
This great book has become a veritable storehouse of informa- 
tion and suggestion for later annalists, historians, and 
students of colonial times. Though altogether untrust- 
worthy unless supported by some other authority, it is 
indispensable for an understanding of the Puritan temper and 
mind. Professor Barrett Wendell, the author of the stand- 
ard life of Cotton Mather, says of the Magnolia, "The prose 
epic of New England Puritanism it has been called, setting 
forth in heroic mood the principles, the history, and the 
personal character of the fathers. The principles, theo- 
logical and disciplinary alike, are stated with clearness, 
dignity, and fervor. The history, though its less welcome 
phases are often highly emphasized and its details are 



''The Colonial Period^' 23 

hampered by no deep regard for minor accuracy, is set forth 
with sincere ardor which makes its temper more instructive 
than that of many more trustworthy records. And the life- 
like portraits of the Lord's chosen, though full of quaintly 
fantastic phrases and artless pedantries, are often drawn 
with touches of enthusiastic beauty."^ 

Jonathan Edwards. The final triumph of Puritanism and 
Calvinistic theology was reached in Jonathan Edwards 
(1703-1758). His intellect is recognized as the profoundest 
of the colonial period, and he is still ranked as one of the 
prominent philosophical thinkers of the modern world. In 
comparison with the Mathers and other noted New England 
divines, he lived a quiet and uneventful life, entering but 
slightly into the social and political conflicts of his times. 
Born in Connecticut in 1703 and descended from a family 
of distinguished preachers, it was but natural that he should 
be educated for the minsitry at Yale College in New Haven. 
He was extremely precocious, especially in his early interest 
in philosophical treatises, such as John Locke's "Essay 
Concerning Human Understanding," which he read with 
delight at fourteen. Before he was twelve, he had himself 
written a controversial letter on the nature of spiritual as 
opposed to materialistic opinions and a rather pretentious 
scientific paper on the habits of spiders. He entered college 
at thirteen and was graduated with first honors at seventeen. 
For a time he continued his studies along with his duties 
as a tutor at Yale, and shortly afterward he was ordained 
as a minister. He accepted the pastorate of the North- 
ampton church, and his preaching here is said to have 
prepared the way for two notable revivals, the second one, 
in connection with Whitefield's visit to New England in 
1740, being known as the "Great Awakening." He finally 
became so severe in his ideas of church discipline that a 
division arose in his congregation, and after almost a quarter 
of a century of service he was forced to withdraw from the 
Northampton church. He took up mission work among 
the Indians in the frontier town of Stockbridge, and con- 
tinued to preach and write. Here he composed his great 
work on the Freedom of the Will. It was published in 1754, 
and so profound was its effect at home and abroad, especially 
in Scotland, where philosophic writing and Calvinistic 

lA Literary History of America, p. .50 



24 History of American Literature 

theology was highly esteemed, that Edwards was at once 
recognized as one of the great thinkers of his day. After 
about seven years of seclusion at Stockbridge, he was called 
to be President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton 
University. But his election to this position was but the 
prelude to his death, for in an epidemic of smallpox, which 
broke out in the college about the time of his election, he 
felt it to be his duty to set an example to the students by 
submitting to the then little understood method of treating 
the disease by inoculation or vaccination. Though every 
known precaution was taken to prevent fatal results, the 
distinguished patient died from the effects of the inoculation. 

.His marriage. One of the most pleasing chapters of 
Edwards' life is that pertaining to his courtship and mar- 
riage. His own description (written when he was twenty) 
of the beautiful girl of thirteen, Sarah Pie'rpont, of New 
Haven, who was soon to become his bride, is illustrative of ' 
the best prose of the colonial period. It admirably shows 
Edwards' tendency toward mysticism and idealism, and 
it is clearly suggestive of the highly spiritualized sentiment 
which we find so prominent in the later New England school 
of writers, known as transcendentalists. 

They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of the 
Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain 
seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes 
to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly 
cares for anything except to meditate on him — that she expects after a 
while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and 
caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let 
her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with 
him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, 
if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, 
she disregards it, and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or 
affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular 
purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; 
and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you 
would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. 
She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence 
of mind ; especially after this great God has manifested himself to her 
mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly, 
and seems to be always full of -joy and pleasure; and no' one knows for 
what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems 
to have some one invisible always conversing with her. 



"The Colonial Period'' 25 

"The Freedom of the Will." The Freedom of the Will is 
a masterpiece of subtle reasoning and a recognized classic 
in philosophical literature. Though it is not so vital to us, 
inasmuch as the trend of modern thought seems to be adverse 
to the discussion of such unsolvable theological problems, 
the apparent contradiction of the doctrine of the freedom? 
of man's will with the doctrine of God's preordained plan 
and foreknowledge of the progress of the universe was one 
of profound interest to our Puritan fathers. Edwards 
assumed the position of the subordination of man's will to 
the play of circumstance, and argued for the complete 
ascendency of God's will. Just about a century after the 
publication of The Freedom of the Will, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, as Professor Barrett Wendell has shown, severely 
satirized the whole system of logic whereby Edwards proved 
the soundness of his position. In "The Deacon's Master- 
piece," Holmes proved that a chaise built of equal strength 
in all its parts would wear out all at once. The absurdity 
of the conclusion is evident, and yet the logic is unanswerable 
if you admit the premises. So it is with Edwards' Calvin- 
istic theology; if you accept his premises, you will be forced 
to admit the justness of his conclusions. Holmes implies 
that Edwards' influence lasted just about a hundred years 
and then suddenly collapsed. The chaise was Calvinism, 
and Jonathan Edwards was the deacon in Holmes's poem. 
The poet ironically concludes his satire with the couplet. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. 
Logic is logic. That's all I say. 

The style of The Freedom of the Will is clear and forceful, 
even though the abstruseness of the subject-matter some- 
times makes the thought hard to grasp. The few readers 
who are attracted to this philosophical treatise, readily and 
even enthusiastically affirm their admiration of the logical 
force of its thought and the clearness of its style. 

His Sermons: "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." 
Much has been written of Edwards' sermons and the 
peculiar powers of his public delivery. The theme most 
frequently reverted to by our historians in writing about 
Edwards as a preacher is that illustrated in the fearful 
sermon called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." 
It is said that so vivid was the preacher's imagery and so 



26 History of American Literature 

real was the terrible punishment he portrayed, that his 
auditors trembled and cried out in distress even in the 
midst of his discourse. He was himself quiet and calm in 
the reading of his sermons — he almost always spoke with 
his manuscript before him — but the clearness and vividness 
of his portrayals and the terrible sincerity of his utterances 
wrought his hearers into a frenzy of excitement. Another 
theme which Edwards occasionally dwelt upon was the 
goodness, mercy, and tender love of God toward sinful man, 
and if he excited his hearers to frenzy in his portrayal of 
the tortures of the doomed sinner, he also wrought them 
into an ecstasy of delight at the prospect of a spiritual union 
with a Being of such loving tenderness, marvellous beauty, 
and infinite mercy. He was, of course, a strict Calvinist in 
his theology, and he gave all the powers of his great mind 
to prove by logic the truth of the Calvinistic doctrines; 
but it must not be forgotten that he was a man of wonderful 
sweetness, purity, and spiritual power in his private life. 
In him were concentrated all of • the higher ideals of his 
Puritan ancestors. Though his works are beyond the inter- 
est and capacity of most young readers, we may safely 
assume that his is the profoundest mind that expressed 
itself in our early literature. 

Literature in the Middle Colonies 

Characteristics of the literature of the middle colonies. 

With two notable exceptions, namely, Woolman's Journal 
and Franklin's Autobiography, the literary productions in 
the middle colonies were more or less mediocre. New York 
was settled by the Dutch, and so played little or no part in 
the eajly development of American literature in English, 
though its early history later furnished Washington Irving 
with a theme for his delightful burlesque called Knicker- 
bocker's History of New York and also with material for some 
of his best tales and sketches. Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey produced a niunber of fairly good writers, and when 
Franklin began his successful publishing business, Phila- 
delphia became the rival of Boston as the intellectual center 
of the colonies. William Penn himself, the founder of the 
Quaker colony in Pennsylvania, wrote some letters worthy 
of reading as a revelation of his equable and peace-loving 
nature. In fact, the whole influence of Penn's colony was 



"The Colonial Period" 27 

toward material comfort, spiritual freedom, and popular 
education, all of which are conducive to the development of 
literature and the other arts of peace. Not entirely in con- 
trast with the Quaker spirit was the extreme utilitarian 
philosophy of Benjamin Franklin; for industry, frugality, 
prudence in business, and practical honesty are quite as 
distinctive of the Quaker's character as are purity, simplicity, 
and spirituality. But undoubtedly the Quaker spirit is 
most perfectly represented in the eighteenth century by John 
Woolman, just as in the nineteenth century it is best repre- 
sented by his admiring editor, John Greenleaf Whittier. 

John Woolman's "Journal." The saintly Quaker 
preacher, John Woolman (1720-17 72), was born on a New 
Jersey farm. He became an early advocate of the abolition 
of slavery, and his whole life was a protest against all kinds 
of cruelty and oppression. Though Woolman was an un- 
educated man, he felt called by "the inner voice" to go 
about the colonies preaching the beautiful Quaker doctrines 
of obedience to the spirit of God as revealed by conscience, 
purity of life, sweetness of temper, non-resistance to evil, 
and tenderness and kindness toward all of God's creatures. 
By his preaching and especially by the purity and sweetness 
of his own example, he attracted many adherents to the 
anti-slavery cause and led many souls to accept his own 
Quaker doctrines. In a characteristic sentence he says, 
"I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in 
writing of my experience of the goodness of God," and so, 
early in his career, he began to record his spiritual and 
temporal experiences in his Journal. The book has been 
called "the sweetest and purest autobiography in the 
language." Charles Lamb advised his readers to "get 
the writings of John Woolman by heart"; Henry Crabb 
Robinson spoke of the style of Woolman's Journal as one 
"of the most exquisite purity and grace"; and Whittier in 
his preface to his edition of the Journal says of it that one 
becomes "sensible, as he reads, of a sweetness as of violets." 
In spite of these encomiums, the average young reader of 
to-day will hardly find. the subtle spirituality of the style 
and subject-matter of this quiet record of a Quaker soul to 
be suited to his interests and tastes. However, Woolman's 
life was so pure and his soul so sensitive to the finer spiritual 
influences that we may unhesitatingly pronounce this unedu- 



28 History oj American Literature 

cated tailor an early American apostle of "sweetness and 
light." The following excerpt from the Journal will illus- 
trate Woolman's quality. 

I kept steadily to meetings; spent first-days afternoons chiefly in 
reading the scriptures and other good books; and was early convinced 
in my mind, that true religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the 
heart doth love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise 
true justice and goodness, not only toward all men, but also toward 
the brute creatures — that as the mind was moved by an inward 
principle to love God as an invisible incomprehensible Being, by the 
same principle it was moved to love him in all his manifestations in the 
visible world — that, as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in 
all animal sensible creatures, to say. we love God as unseen and at the 
same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his 
life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself. 

Thomas Godfrey. One poet of the Middle Colonies de- 
serves to be remembered not only as the author of the first 
tragedy written and acted in America, but for the real merit 
and high promise of some of his juvenile poetical efforts. 
Thomas Godfrey (173 6- 17 63) was born in Philadelphia. 
After attending school for a few months, he was appren- 
ticed to a watchmaker. He took an active part in the 
French and Indian War, serving under Colonel George 
Washington, and was later engaged in business in Wil- 
mington, North Carolina. He seems to have been steadily 
attracted toward literature. He studied and found inspira- 
tion in the works of Chaucer, wrote heroic couplets in the 
manner of Pope and Dry den, and composed a tragedy in 
blank verse after the manner of the Elizabethan dramatists. 
This last. The Prince of Parthia,^ has become noteworthy 
as the first serious dramatic composition produced in Amer- 
ica. It was composed in 1759, published in 1765, and 
played by a professional company at Philadelphia in 1767. 
It is written in somewhat high-sounding and extravagant 
blank verse, but it has in it some good qualities as a poetical 
tragedy and as an acting play. It shows unmistakable 
evidences of close imitation of Shakespeare's tragedies. We 
must remember, however, that it was the work of a very 
young man, and in its purely artistic and literary appeal it 



iThis play was reprinted twice in 1917, in H. H. Quinn's Represejilalive 
American Plays, and in a separate volume edited by Archibald Henderson. 



"The Colonial Period" 29 

is a distinct advance upon the somber and terrifying poetry 
of the Puritan muse as represented by Wigglesworth in ' ' The 
Day of Doom." 

Benjamin Franklin. If Jonathan Edwards represents the 
highest attainment of the Puritan mind in the metaphysical 
and spiritual realm, Benjamin Franklin (i 706-1790) repre- 
sents the highest success in the practical affairs, of life. 
Though bom and reared in Boston, Franklin spent the most 
productive period of his life in Philadelphia, and hence we 
may speak of him as the representative of the Middle 
Colonies. The larger part of his enduring literary produc- 
tions properly belongs to the Revolutionary period, but his 
early connection with journalism in the colonies, his publica- 
tion of Poor Richard's Almanac from 1732 to 1757 (for the 
years 1733 to 1758), his numerous essays, his papers on 
scientific and practical subjects, his himiorous and satiric 
sketches, his reports of his experiences before the English 
Parliament, all written before 1765, make it advisable to 
discuss this great man — printer, inventor, statesman, 
patriot, philosopher, philanthropist, and writer — in the 
Colonial, rather than in the Revolutionary period. 

His early life. The facts of Franklin's life are well known. 
The eleventh and youngest son of a soap boiler and tallow 
candler, he was bom in Boston, January 17, 1706. He was 
sent to school during parts of two years and then appren- 
ticed to the printer's trade under his eldest brother, owner 
of the second newspaper printed in America, The New Eng- 
land Courant. While Franklin had little formal education, 
he was a close student and a careful and tireless reader; 
and naturally in his trade of printer he soon acquired a good 
practical English education. He wrote some brief essays 
in imitation of Addison's Spectator Papers, a volume of 
which he found in his father's library. During the night he 
slipped them under the door of his brother's printing shop, 
and was pleased to find that his compositions were deemed 
worthy of publication and that they attracted considerable 
favorable comment when they appeared in print. Dis- 
satisfied with the treatment he was receiving at the hands 
of his brother, Franklin, having been accidentally freed from 
the bonds of his apprenticeship by a legal ruse t»f his brother's, 
ran away when he was seventeen years old, passed through 
New York, and landed in Philadelphia, where he found 



30 History of American Literature 

employment in his trade. Everyone knows the story of his 
ludicrous entry into Philadelphia, as it is described in the 
Autobiography. Franklin seems to take keen delight in 
telling how he walked down Market Street, his pockets 
stuffed with his extra shirt and stockings, a big puffy roll 
under each arm, while he was eating on a third, thus provok- 
ing by his comical appearance the laughter of Miss Deborah 
Read, the young woman who afterward became his wife. 

His later attainments. By his industry and energy, Frank- 
lin prospered in his trade and presently attracted the atten- 
tion of Governor Keith, who promised him letters of credit 
and sent him to England to buy a printing outfit. The 
governor failed him, and Franklin found himself in London 
without money or credit. He managed to get work at his 
trade, and was thus enabled to make a study of the most 
advanced methods of printing as practiced in England. 
After eighteen months he returned to Philadelphia, bought 
the Pennsylvania Gazette, and began a publishing business 
on his own account. He soon rose to a position of influence 
and prominence in the colony. His almanacs, the first of 
which was printed in 1732 for the year 1733, contained, 
besides the regular information in such publications, a lot of 
useful and entertaining matter, including the quaint proverbs 
and humorous sayings of Richard vSaunders, or "Poor 
Richard," the supposed author of the almanacs. The 
publications became exceedingly popular and profitable, 
eventually as many as 10,000 copies being sold annually. 
Franklin's success as a publisher was now assured. Pres- 
ently he had accumulated for himself a comfortable fortune, 
and he retired from active business to devote himself to 
public services of one kind or another. He projected many 
schemes for bettering the life of his city and the colonies 
generally. Fie was especially interested in various educa- 
tional projects, and he is now revered as the founder of the 
Philadelphia Library, of the academy which eventually 
became the University of Pennsylvania, and of the American 
Philosophical Society. He greatly improved the postal 
service of the city when he became postmaster of Phila- 
delphia, and later, when he was appointed post-master- 
general, of the whole colony. He invented many useful 
devices, among them the Franklin stove and the lightning 
rod, and he generously refused to take out patents, preferring 




Courtesy of the Bostonian Society 
THE PRESS AND TYPE CASES USED BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 



"The Colonial Period" 31 

to give his inventions to the pubhc without restrictions. 
In scientific investigations he made notable advances, 
particularly in his electrical experiments, in which he demon- 
strated that lightning was but one manifestation of elec- 
tricity. He was regarded as one of the wisest investigators 
of his day, and the leading foreign nations vied with each 
other in awarding him distinguished honors for his scientific 
discoveries. 

His services to the government. His participation in the 
foreign and domestic politics of his country was so large 
that we can merely glance at his activities in this sphere. 
He was sent to England to represent the colony in several 
disputes that had arisen with the proprietors, and his success 
in clearing up these troubles led to his appointment on a 
commission to protest against the policy of the English 
government in enforcing the Stamp Act and other obnoxious 
laws. He remained in England for about eighteen years 
in all, and during all this time he served well the interests 
of the colonies. While he made a profound impression upon 
the English government and succeeded for a time in pre- 
venting drastic action against the colonists, he was unable to 
secure permanent relief, and he finally returned to America 
to become an ardent supporter of the Revolution and a 
signer of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps the 
best ser\'ice he rendered to the cause was his successful 
mission to France to secure the aid of that countrv in our 
struggle against England. He remained in France for a 
number of years, representing later the new government at 
the French court, where he was by far the most excessivelv 
admired and courted man in the diplomatic circle. Upon 
his return to America in 1785, he was chosen governor of 
Pennsylvania, elected to the Constitutional Convention in 
1787, and honored in many other ways by his countrymen. 
He died February 12, 1790, one of the best-loved and most 
highly respected citizens of the new republic. Among 
our Revolutionary heroes, he shares with Washington the 
love and gratitude of the nation, and doubtless, through the 
practical proverbs for the almanacs, and the wideh- read 
Autobiography, his personality is even better known than 
that of the "Father of his Country." 

His philosophy: The Almanacs. Franklin's philosophy of 
life has been sometimes condemned as entirely too prac- 



32 History oj American Literature 

tical and utilitarian. There is no question but that there 
is too much emphasis on the material and too little on the 
spiritual in his view of life ; but we must remember that such 
a practical philosophy as Franklin preached from his pulpits 
of newspaper and almanac was needed to balance the 
extreme idealism of such men as Jonathan Edwardi among 
the Puritans and John Woolman among the Quakers. It 
was through the almanacs that Franklin reached his largest 
audience, for his publications in this kind were well thumbed 
in practically every household of the colonies. The selec- 
tions of verse, witty sayings, amusing sketches, and bits of 
superstitious lore added something to the popularity of the 
almanacs, but it was the practical proverbs and utilitarian 
philosophy which made the deepest and most abiding impres- 
sion on the colonial mind. In the last of the almanacs, the 
one for 1758, Poor Richard gathered up the best of all the 
proverbs in a final discourse in the form of a report of 
"Father Abraham's Speech." It is said that this com- 
pendium of Poor Richard's sayings was by far the most 
widely read piece of colonial literature. It was translated 
into practically every modem foreign language; since its 
first publication it has been printed in more than four hun- 
dred editions. Under various titles the discourse was struck 
off on broad sheets and freely distributed among the poorer 
working classes to encourage thrift, industry, frugality, 
prudence, perseverance, and honesty. The following prov- 
erbs taken from "Father Abraham's Speech," though by 
no means all original, will illustrate the kind of maxims which 
Franklin was constantly repeating in his almanacs. 

1. Be ashamed to catch yourself idle. 

2. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee. 

3. Light strokes fell great oaks. 

4. Three removes are as bad as a fire. 

5. He that by the plow would thrive 
Himself must either hold or drive. 

6. At a great pennyworth, pause awhile. 

7. Plow deep while sluggards sleep 

And you shall have corn to sell and to keep. 

8. A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his keees. 

9. If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow 

some; for he who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing. 
ID. Creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and 
times. 

11. It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. 

12. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, 

and scarce in that. 



"The Colonial Period" 33 

The "Autobiography." Though FrankUn was not primarily 
an author, for the best efforts of his Hfe were given to busi- 
ness, diplomacy, statesmanship, and practical philanthropy, 
he succeeded in writing the one universally read classic of 
the two literary periods in which his life falls. The Auto- 
biography is a book which everyone, particularly every 
American, should read. It is full of practical wisdom, sound 
advice, and the revelation of a fascinating personality — -all 
presented in an admirably lively, forceful, and simple prose 
style. The book is preeminently human and natural, and 
richly deserves the high rank it has attained. It is unques- 
tionably the one outstanding masterpiece of our early 
literature. Further analysis of or quotation from this 
"classic" is unnecessary, for every American boy and girl 
should read the entire book.^ 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

SUITABLE FOR HIGH-SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND 

OUTSIDE READING 

General Reference Books for American Literature 
Charles F. Richardson, American Literature; Putnam, N. Y., 1897. 
*Barrett Wendell, A Literary History of America; Scribner, N.Y., 1901. 
*S. L. Whitcomb, Chronological Outlines of American Literature; Mac- 

millan, N. Y., 1894. 
W. P. Trent, A History of American Literature; Appleton, N. Y., 1904. 

*Theodore Stanton, editor, A Manual of American Literature; Putnam, 
N. Y., 1909. (This volume contains in greatly reduced form 
Moses Coit Tyler's four volumes on the history of Colonial and 
Revolutionary literature, together with chapters by various hands 
on the different classes of American writers of the nineteenth 
century. Valuable as a reference volume or handbook. 

*Cambridge History of American Literature; 3 vols., Cambridge Press, 
Cambridge, England, and N. Y., 191 7. 

E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopcedia of American Literature, 
Embracing Personal and Critical Notices of Authors, and Selec- 
tions from Their Writings; 2 vols., Scribner, N. Y., 1856. 

*Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature; 11 vols., 
Benjamin, N. Y., 1888-90. 



iSee the excellent illustrated school edition edited by George B. Alton, 
in the Canterbury Classics, Rand McNally & Co., Chicago. 

* These volumes are especially valuable for high-school libraries. 



34 History oj American Literature 

Alderman and Others, Library of Southern Literature; i6 vols., Martin, 
and Hoyt, Atlanta, 1907-1913. 

*A. B. Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries;. 4 vols., Mac- 
millan, N. Y. 1898. (This is a valuable reference book both for 
history and for literature classes.) 

Special Reference Books for Colonial Literature 1 

7. History of Literature and Selections 

*Tyler, History of American Literature, Colonial Period, 1617-176$; 
2 vols., Putnam, N. Y., 1897. (Also Students Edition in one 
volume, 1909). 

Old South Leaflets; Directors of Old South Meeting House, Boston, 
various dates. 

Trent and Wells, Colonial Prose and Poetry; 3 vols., Crowell, N. Y., 
1901. 

*Cairns, Selections from Early American Writers, 1607- 1800; Mac- 
millan, N. Y., 1909. (This is the best single volume reference 
book on the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods. It contains 
brief biographical sketches and abundant selections for high-school 
or college classes). 

Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature, Vols. I 
and II. 

Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, Vols. I and II. 

2. Later Poetry Dealing with Colonial Times 

Longfellow, "The Skeleton in Armor," "Hiawatha," "The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish," "Evangeline," etc. 

Scollard, "The First Thanksgiving." 

Holmes, "The Pilgrim's Vision," "On Lending a Punch Bowl," "Song 
for the Centennial Celebration of Harvard," "The Deacon's 
Masterpiece," "The Broomstick Train; or. The Return of the 
Witches," etc. 

English, "The Burning of Jamestown." 

Whittier, "The Preacher." 

Thackeray, "Pocahontas." 

Lanier, "Psalm of the West." 

See Burton E. Stevenson's Poems of American History, for fuller list of 
poems dealing with the Colonial Period. 

J. Later Fiction Dealing with Colonial Times 

Irving, Knickerbocker's History of New York (Humorous), "Rip Van 
Winkle," etc. 



iThe important works named in the body of the text are not listed here. 



"The Colonial Period" 35 

Cooper, The Leather-Stocking Tales — The Pioneers, The Last of the 
Mohicans, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer (some of 
these may be classed in Revolutionary times), The Wept of Wish- 
Ton-Wish (War of King Philip of Pokanoket), The Red Skins, The 
Red Rover. 

SiMMS, The Yemassee: A Romance of Carolina. 

Cooke, My Lady Pocahontas, Fairfax. 

Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Grandfather's Chair, Mosses from an 
Old Manse, and Twice-Told Tales (especially "TheGray Champion," 
"The Gentle Boy," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," and "Legends 
of the Province House," including "Howe's Masquerade," "Edward 
Randolph's Portrait," "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "Old Esther 
Dudley," etc. 

Paulding, "The Dutchman's Fireside." 

Stimson, King Noanett: A story of the Devon Settlers in Old Virginia 
and Massachusetts Bay. 

Holland, The Bay Path; A Tale of Neiv England Colonial Life. 

Eggleston, Pocahontas and Powhatan. 

Austin, Standish of Standish, Betty Alden, etc. 

Barr, a Bow of Orange Ribbon (Dutch New York), Black Shilling, 
(Salem witchcraft). 

Johnston, To Have and To Hold, Prisoners of Hope, Audrey, etc. 

Sedgwick, Hope Leslie; or. Early Times in Massachusetts, etc. 

4. Essays and Historical Works Dealing with Colonial Times 

Emerson, "Historical Discourse on the Second Centennial of the 
Incorporation of the Town of Concord." 

Lowell, "New England Two Centuries Ago," and "Witchcraft" (in 
Literary Essays, Vol. H). 

Lodge, English Colonies in America. 

Doyle, English Colonies in America (3 vols.). 

Drake, The Making of New England and The Making of Virginia and 
The Middle Colonies. 

Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, The Beginnings of New England, 
The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. 

Earle, Colonial Days in Old New York, Costume of Colonial Times, 
Customs and Fashions in Old New England. 

Parkman, Historical Works. (These give a trustworthy and entertaining 
account of the struggle for supremacy in America, portraying 
particularly the French settlements and Indian life in connection. 
See the discussion of Parkman on p. 000.) 



II. THE REVOLUTIONARY AND FORMATIVE 
PERIOD, 1765-1800 

General Characteristics 

The Revolutionary period. Strictly speaking, the Revo- 
lution extends from the beginning of hostilities in 1775 to 
the conclusion of peace in 1782; but for a survey of Revolu- 
tionary literature it is necessary, in order to get an adequate 
conception of the political, patriotic, and general literary 
productions incident to the period, to include the years 
immediately preceding and immediately following the actual 
conflict. We have therefore chosen the year of the Stamp 
Act Congress, 1765, which marks the first formal protest by 
the colonies against the mother country, and the year 1800, 
marking the turn of the century and the election of Thomas 
Jefferson, third president of the United States, as the inclu- 
sive dates of the Revolutionary and Formative period of 
our literature. 

General characteristics. The literature of these tumultu- 
ous and significant years in the history of our nation is 
naturally colored by the important activities of the times, 
and hence is largely controversial in nature, the first part 
of the period presenting the controversy between the colonies 
and the English government, or the Whigs and -the Tories; 
and the second part of the period showing the controversy 
resulting from the conflicting interests of the various colonies, 
which finally crystalized in the two opposing political 
parties that arose out of the discussion of the nature and 
limitations of the newly formed constitutional govern- 
ment. Hence this is the period par excellence of the orator 
and the statesman. Patriotic speeches, state papers, gov- 
ernmental essays, and political pamphlets of every kind 
abound and make up the distinctive literature of the period. 
Poetry becomes more prominent than it was in the colonial 
period, but still takes a minor position, being largely satirical 
or national and patriotic in tendency, and strongly colored 
by the prevailing political problems of the times. Very 
little purely artistic literature of any kind was produced; 

[36] 



"The Revolutionary Period" 37 

native drama was merely incipient; not until the very end 
of the period did imaginative poetry and fiction emerge, 
and even then only two names, stand out with any distinct 
prominence or promise — namely, Philip Freneau in poetry 
and Charles Brockden Brown in prose fiction. Practically 
all the writers of the entire period are satirists, political 
essayists, publicists, and statesmen. While this contro- 
versial and political literature of Revolutionary times is 
extremely important as a basis of historical interpretation, 
and while some of it, by virtue of the sincere passion, patri- 
otic fervor, and moral earnestness which gave it birth, 
approaches the borders of art, yet it is not purely artistic 
literature, and the high-school student may pass rapidly 
over this period of our literary history so far as making a 
minute study of its products is concerned. 

Historical Background 

Growth of the opposition to British rule. To enable one 
to gain a satisfactory comprehension of the literature of 
the Revolutionary period, a brief resume of the events lead- 
ing toward a firmer union of the various colonies will be 
essential. Though as early as 1760 some distinct mutter- 
ings were heard, it was not until 1765 that the condemnation 
of England's governmental policies became open and 
formidable. About this time the agitation concerning the 
method by which the colonies should be governed crystalized 
itself in the colonial mind in the familiar phrase ' ' no taxation 
without representation." The Navigation Acts, Acts of 
Trade, aiid other forms of restrictive legislation aimed at 
the colonies were resisted by open violation and smuggling 
operations. The British government issued Writs of 
Assistance in 1761, giving authority to customs officials to 
search for smuggled goods in any suspected place. This 
aroused immense indignation in the colonies (see the account 
of Otis's speech, p. 41). The Stamp Act was passed in 
1765, and in October of that year the different colonies sent 
representatives to New York to consider the situation and 
make a formal protest. This convention was known as 
the Stamp Act Congress. It drew up a "Declaration of 
Rights and Grievances of the Colonists," and sent it, along 
with a petition for relief, to the English government. The 
Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament declared its right 



38 History of American Literature 

to tax the colonies, and passed a new tariff or excise tax 
measure almost immediately. This measure brought forth 
an increasing storm of protect from the colonists, and as a 
compromise all the duties imposed, except that on tea, were 
repealed. The British government sent troops to Massa- 
chusetts to enforce its authority, and in 1770 open violence 
between the citizens and the soldiers resulted in the death 
of five colonists. The English authorities shortly afterward 
withdrew the troops from Boston, where the massacre 
occurred, and thus avoided further immediate trouble. 
Committees of Correspondence between the different 
colonial governments were appointed, and under the leader- 
ship of such men as Samuel Adams in Massachusetts and 
Patrick Henry in Virginia the spirit of united resistance 
against the mother country was kept alive. The first 
Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1774. In 
1775 the famous Boston Tea Party took place, and open- 
armed conflict between the colonists and the British soldiers 
became at once imminent. Hostilities began almost imme- 
diately, the celebrated fights at Concord and Lexington 
taking place on April 19, 1775. The Second Continental 
Congress convened at Philadelphia in 1775, and on July 4, 
1776, independence was declared. The war was brought to 
a successful conclusion with the defeat of Cornwallis in 
1 781, and in the treaty of peace which followed in 1782, 
England recognized the complete independence of the thir- 
teen American Colonies. 

Formation of the Union. Then came the period of the 
formation of the new government. The Continental Con- 
gress was acknowledged to be but a makeshift to meet the 
needs of the colonists during the war. The Articles of Con- 
federation under which Congress operated were but a loosely 
defined set of agreements, with no means of enforcement 
except through the acquiescence and voluntary support of 
the various colonies. So long as the war lasted, the spirit 
of mutual protection banded the colonies together; and the 
final success of the Revolution undoubtedly gave a strong 
impetus toward the continuation of centralized power in 
the federal government. But naturally differences of opin- 
ion and jealousies between the different governments arose, 
and the confederation was seriously threatened. From 1783 
to 1788 the life of the new government hung in the balance. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 



"The Revolutionary Period" 39 

Under the influence of Washington, Hamilton, Samuel 
Adams, and others, agitation for a convention began, and 
in 1787 the Federal Constitutional Convention assembled 
in Philadelphia. The many differences of opinion were 
finally settled, and the Constitution was framed upon the 
tri-partite plan of executive, legislative, and judiciary func- 
tions. The instrument was submitted to the states for 
ratification in the latter part of 1787, and during the next 
year occurred the great popular discussion of the merits 
and defects of the new scheme of federal government. The 
Constitution was finally adopted by eleven states, and 
Washington was the unanimous choice for the first presi- 
dent. During the following years there gradually sprang 
up two opposing parties, led respectively by Alexander 
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. "The final form taken 
by these two parties depended much upon the character of 
their leaders. Hamilton, a man of great personal force 
and of strong aristocratic feeling, represented the principle 
of authority, of government framed and administered by a 
select few for the benefit of their fellows. Jefferson, an 
advocate of popular government extended to a point never 
before reached, declared that his party was made up of 
those, who identified themselves with the people, have confi- 
dence in them, cherish and consider them as the most 
honest and safe, although not the most wise, depositary of 
the public interest.' "^ 

An estimate of Revolutionary literature. Upon and around 
these historical facts revolves the great mass of our contro- 
versial literature which sprang up during this period. As 
Professor Moses Coit Tyler says, "The literature of our 
Revolution has everywhere the combative note, its habitual 
method is argumentative, persuasive, appealing, rasping, 
retaliatory; the very brain seems to be in armor; his wit is 
in the gladiator's attitude of offense and defense. It is a 
literature indulging itself in grimaces, in mockery, in scowls; 
a literature accented by earnest gestures meant to convince 
the people, or by fierce blows meant to smite them down. 
In this literature we must not expect to find art used for 
art's sake."- 



lA. B. Hart, Formation of the Union, p. 155. 

2 Moses Coit Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, {1763- 
1783). Vol. I, p. 6. 



40 History of American Literature 

The Orators 

Nature of oratory. Among the chief orators who sup- 
ported the cause of the colonists were James Otis (1725- 
1783), Samuel Adams (1722-1803), and John Adams (1735- 
1826), all of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry (173 6- 1799) 
of Virginia. Of these James Otis and Patrick Henry are 
typical Revolutionary orators. Oratory is usually born 
of an occasion, and when the occasion has passed the oration 
becomes largely a mere memory to those who heard the 
spoken words. Hence there is little literary permanency 
to the popular oratory born of a moment and uttered under 
the stress of fiery emotion. The reputation of the orator 
survives, but his extemporaneous speeches, delivered under 
the excitement and inspiration of the occasion, usually pass 
away with the breath which gives them utterance. This 
is precisely what happened in the case of Otis, and it is 
almost precisely what happened in the case of Henry's 
fiery orations. 

James Otis. The most famous of Otis's speeches is the 
one delivered in 1761 at Boston in opposition to the Writs 
of Assistance or warrants of search in private homes for 
smuggled goods. No authentic reproduction has come down 
to us, but John Adams, who heard the speech, made notes 
of it, and in his later reminiscences he spoke of Otis on this 
occasion as a flame of fire, and the hour of the delivery of 
his speech as the real birth hour of American independence. 
In the course of his argument Otis declared that the Navi- 
gation Acts were "a taxation law made by a foreign legis- 
lature without our consent," and this phrase in a slightly 
changed form became the chief slogan of the Revolutionary 
agitators. Otis was advocate-general of the colony, but he 
gave up this high-salaried position under the crown rather 
than support the nefarious Writs of Assistance. He threw 
himself wholly into the cause of the colonists in their resist- 
ance to these oppressive laws and wrote several pamphlets 
distinguished by calmness and judicial poise quite in con- 
trast with the passionate eloquence in his speeches, among 
them being the sound and conservative argument called 
"The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved 
(1764)." In a personal affray with some of his political 
enemies, Otis suffered injuries from which he lost his mind 



^'The Revolutionary Period" 41 

and later died, and thus he may be counted among the very 
earliest martyrs to the cause of American liberty. 

Patrick Henry: his "Speech on Liberty." Patrick Henry 
was a typical Southern statesman, born of good family and 
representing the conservative and independent and at the 
same time passionate ideals of Virginia. He was elected 
to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765, and here he first 
won fame in the discussion of the Stamp Act by making 
the famous comparison which brought out the cry of "Trea- 
son! Treason!" from the loyalist members — "Caesar had 
his Brutus; Charles the First had his Cromwell; and George 
the Third," — here the speaker was interrupted, but he calmly 
concluded in the midst of the cries of "Treason," — "may 
profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most 
of it." In 1775 he made another famous speech, which has 
come down to us through the report given by William Wirt, 
himself an excellent orator and prose writer of the early 
nineteenth century. How much of Henry's "Speech on 
Liberty" is due to Wirt's own composition from his memory 
of the speech — it is impossible to tell, but there is no question 
of the masterly style, ardent passion, and moving power 
exhibited in the famous oration now made almost uni- 
versally familiar by innumerable declamatory repetitions. 
It begins, "Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge 
in the illusions of hope," and ends with the magnificent 
peroration, 

It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "peace, 
peace!" — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The 
next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash 
of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why 
stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would 
they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the 
price of chains and slavery! Forbid it. Almighty God! I know not 
what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me 
death ! 

Henry's later speeches. In the discussions which followed 
the submitting of the Constitution to the several colonies 
for ratification, Henry opposed the adoption of the new 
form of federal government. He feared the results of too 
much concentration or centralization of power. He even 
went so far as to suggest that under the proposed plan the 



42 History of American LiteraUire 

president might easily make himself king, and the colonies 
would again be subjected to the yoke of a monarchical form 
of government. In spite of Henry's opposition, however, 
Virginia finally adopted the Constitution. The later 
speeches of the great orator were more authentically recorded 
than the earlier famous one reported by Wirt, for they were 
taken down in shorthand, with perhaps a few verbal inaccu- 
racies, as they were delivered in the Virginia Convention. 
The style shows all the powerful appeal of the traditional 
orator — climactic periods, exclamatory sentences, rhetorical 
questions, and passionate outbursts — but the quality is 
more purely argumentative and less perfervid than the 
highly emotional style of the "vSpeech on Liberty." All in 
all we may rank Patrick Henry as the most illustrious of our 
Revolutionary^ orators. 

PlTBLICISTS AND ANNALISTS 

Samuel Adams. vSamuel Adams (172 2-1 803) and his 
kinsman John Adams have been named among the orators, 
but their influence was probably greater as publicists and 
writers than as speakers. Samuel Adams has been singled 
out by Englishmen as the man who was the greatest obstacle 
in the way of a peaceful adjustment between England and 
the colonies. He was an untiring enemy of compromise, 
and he wrote perhaps more — though he signed his name to 
very little of what he published — than any of the early 
agitators. He prepared many reports, memorials, articles 
for the press, and state papers, all of which show his clear 
and convincing style as a controversial writer. He directed 
the work of the Committee of Correspondence for Massa- 
chusetts, and became so vigorously aggressive in his opposi- 
tion to England that he was not included in the general 
pardon which that countr}^ declared in 1775, a fact of which 
he was always exceedingly proud. He was a skilful poli- 
tician, a successful party manipulator, and a powerful 
political journalist, and he has been pronounced by histo- 
rians as the most influential of the Revolutionary agitators. 

John Adams. John Adams (173 5-1 82 6), the cousin of 
Samuel Adams, was perhaps a more profound thinker and 
a more careful writer than his kinsman, and he eventually 
received higher political regard, being elected president in 



"The Revolutionary Period" 43 

1796 to succeed Washington; but his popular influence was 
not nearly so great as that of the elder Adams. He was what 
we may call a constitutional lawyer, basing his orations and 
pamphlets on the profound underlying principles of govern- 
ment rather than upon the principle of expediency and popu- 
lar appeal. Though his writings command respect and 
admiration, the strong legal and logical bent of his mind 
robs them of much of that human element which is essential 
to good literature. 

Tory pamphleteers. It must not be assumed that all the 
good controversial writing was on one side of the questions 
at issue. There were somie excellent loyalist pamphleteers, 
among them being Samuel Seabury (i 729-1 796), an Epis- 
copal minister, later consecrated in Connecticut as the first 
bishop of the American Episcopal Church, the author of 
a number of attractive letters written under the pen-name 
of "A Westchester Farmer"; Daniel Leonard, a graduate of 
Harvard College and a Boston lawyer, author of strong 
loyalist newspaper articles signed " Massachusettsensis " ; 
and Joseph Galloway (1729-1S03), a native of Maryland 
who moved to Philadelphia to practice law and there wrote 
a conservative "Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great 
Britain and the Colonies." 

John Dickinson. Along with these writers, though not 
of them, should be mentioned John Dickinson (173 2- 1808), 
of Philadelphia, author of many excellent conservative 
articles and pamphlets. The best known of his writings is 
a series of newspaper articles called ' ' Letters from a Penn- 
sylvania Farmer to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies" 
(1767-68); in these articles he tried to show the merits of 
both sides of the controversy and thus lead to friendly 
settlement of the difficulties confronting the people. Pro- 
fessor Tyler says, "No other serious political essays of the 
Revolution equalled the 'Farmer's Letters' in literary 
merit, including in that term the merit of substance as 
well as of form."i These letters were published in all the 
newspapers of the colonies and attracted a great deal of 
attention; they were also widely published in Europe, where 
they received serious consideration. When the war broke 



1 Moses Coit Tyler, Literary History of Ihe American Revolulion, {1763- 
1783), Vol. I, p. 236. 



44 History of American Literature 

out, Dickinson became a staunch supporter of the colonial 
cause. He was also the author of a stilted but at one time 
highly admired Revolutionary ode known as ' ' The Song 
for American Liberty." 

Alexander Hamilton. When he was a boy of seventeen 
studying at King's College (now Columbia University) in 
New York City, Alexander Hamilton (i 757-1804) began his 
career as a political writer by his successful answers to the 
letters of "A Westchester Farmer" (see Samuel Seabury, 
p. 4j) in a series called "The Farmer Refuted." Hamilton 
was born in the West Indies and was at an early age thrown 
on his own resources. He entered business, but showed 
such precocious abilities that he was urged by admiring 
friends to go abroad to seek an education. He entered 
heartily into the pre-Revolutionary agitation as orator, 
pamphleteer, and statesman, and later became a powerful 
force in the formation and adoption of the Constitution and 
in the actual management of the government in the various 
important public offices which he held. 

"The Federalist." The greatest service that Hamilton 
rendered to the new government was through a series of 
papers planned by him and written largely by him and James 
Madison, and now known as The Federalist. It was in 
1787-88 that these papers first appeared in newspapers, but 
they were afterward collected into a volume, and this contro- 
versial document, written to explain and defend the new 
constitution, has become an authoritative statement of 
the nature and principles of constitutional government. 
The style of the work is restrained and dignified, striking in 
its simplicity and directness, and overwhelmingly convincing 
in its clearness and logical force. So uniform and decisive 
is the style that it is difficult to determine the authorship 
ofthe letters without direct outside information. John Jay 
wrote a few numbers, but to Hamilton and Madison belongs 
the credit of composing the great majority of the papers, 
and to Hamilton must be given the greater praise, because 
he conceived the plan and wrote the first — and at least 
three-fifths of the whole number — of the papers. 

Thomas Jefferson. Upon Thomas Jefferson's tomb at 
Monticello, his home near Charlottesville, Virginia, are 
inscribed the following words, composed by himself: 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON 



"The Revolutionary Period" 45 

HERE LIES BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON, AUTHOR OF THE 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, OF THE STATUTE OF 
VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, AND FATHER OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 

These three items may be summ.arized in the single idea 
of human hberty; for the first represents pohtical Hberty, 
the second reHgious Hberty, and the . third intellectual 
liberty. Jefferson was not primarily nor intentionally an 
author in the restricted sense of that term, but he was well 
prepared to become one both by temperament and by 
training. In another age and country he might have become 
a great romantic writer as easily as he did become a great 
idealist in politics in the age and land in which he happened 
to live. Born in Albemarle County in 1743 and educated in 
the best schools of his day under the classical ideals, he 
naturally turned to politics as a career in the tumultuous 
times when the colonies were arrayed against foreign domi- 
nation in the conduct of their local governments. He was 
elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769, and from 
this time on to the end of his life he devoted himself to the 
senace of his country in one way or another. It is useless 
to review his public career, for the main items are known to 
all who read the elemental facts of our national history. 
It is to his writings and cultural interests that we must 
devote our attention. 

Jefferson's state papers: The Declaration of Independence. 
The first important state paper of Jefferson's which had any 
direct influence on the course of events was his "Instructions 
to the Virginia Delegates to the Congress of 1774." This 
was reprinted and sent abroad under the title "A Siunmary 
View of the Rights of America," and it is said that in this 
form it suggested to Edmund Burke some of the arguments 
he used in his great speech on ' ' Conciliation with the Ameri- 
can Colonies." The two other state papers by Jefferson 
which should not be omitted from any survey of our political 
classics are "The Declaration of Independence," composed 
in 1776, and the "First Inaugural Address," delivered in 
1 80 1 when he became third president of the United States. 
The last of these is a fine example of the formal political 
address, but it is to the first that we must give especial 
attention. The fact that Jefferson, one of the youngest 



46 History of American Literature 

men in the convention, should have been selected to draft 
the Declaration of Independence is sufficient proof of the 
confidence which his contemporaries had in his literary- 
abilities, and his success in the task is attested by the uni- 
versal esteem in which that document is still held, not only 
for its historical value as a landmark in the establishment of 
our nation, but for its excellent literary form. Jefferson 
succeeded in crystalizing in this great state paper the 
thought and emotion of a whole people, and at the same time 
he put the stamp of his own personality upon the instrument. 
The phraseology of the Declaration is, of course, partially 
borrowed from similar earlier declarations or bills of rights, 
and it is well known that there were numerous changes and 
corrections made when the paper was subjected to the revi- 
sion of the convention. But the genius and spirit of the 
whole, the literary form and the passion which underlie it, 
belong to Jefferson, and to him we may unhesitatingly 
ascribe the authorship of the noblest political classic of our 
nation. The style is dignified and sonorous and unmis- 
takably clear and decisive, but at times somewhat formal 
in its excessive parallelism and somewhat stilted in its dic- 
tion. The opening paragraph illustrates the quality of the 
style at its best. 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one 
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with 
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate 
and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God 
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that 
they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

His Notes on Virginia and his Autobiography. Most of 
the material in the ten large volumes of Jefferson's collected 
works consists of letters and state papers. There are 
several works, however, which rise to the importance of 
formal volumes. The Notes on Virginia (1784), prepared 
in response to a request from the French government, is 
perhaps Jefferson's most ambitious book. It is carefully 
written and is full of interesting facts, figures, and descrip- 
tions of the country and the customs of those early days, 
but it is not to be considered as literature in the restricted 
sense. Jefferson's Autobiography, too, written after he had 
retired from active public life and was devoting himself to 
his estate, Monticello, and to fostering the growth of the 



"The Revohiiionary Period" 47 

University of Virginia at Charlottesville, is chiefly valuable 
as a storehouse of information concerning the public events 
in which the great commoner took part. But even if Jeffer- 
son's work as a whole is not primarily literary, there is in 
his personality a certain cultural richness which lends 
importance to him as a literary figure. He wrote an Anglo- 
Saxon grammar; he was a reader of all sorts of literature, as 
is indicated by his admiration for such work as Macpherson's 
Ossian; he was interested in music and painting; and he 
was especially devoted to architecture, as is evidenced by 
the charming beauty of his own home and by the elaborate 
drawings which he prepared in his scheme for the buildings 
of the University of Virginia. In fact, it is due to the 
idealism and culture of its aspiring and art -loving patron 
that the University of Virginia today enjoys the distinction 
of possessing a unique cultural atmosphere. 

George Washington :- "The Farewell Address." George 
Washington (1732-1799) was more of a soldier and a states- 
man than a writer or orator, but on certain impressive 
occasions in his life he delivered addresses which rise to the 
plane of noble political literature. The first of these public 
utterances which should be remembered is his brief "Address 
Delivered upon Surrendering to Congress his Commission 
as Commander in Chief of the Revolutionary Army" (1783) ; 
and another is the universally esteemed "Farewell Address 
to the American People" (1796). The last is in reality a 
state paper in the form of a dignified personal address by 
the great president to his friends and fellow-citizens. It 
€omes as a fitting climax to Washington's public career. At 
the end of his first term as president (1792) he asked James 
Madison to prepare for him a draft of a farewell address to 
the people, but when he accepted the nomination for a 
second term he put off the final preparation of the address 
until 1796. He then called Alexander Hamilton into con- 
sultation and prepared the great "Farewell Address." It 
is customary for our chief executives to get advice and 
suggestions from their cabinet officers in the preparation 
of practically all important state papers; hence there is no 
reason to deprive Washington of the credit he deserves for 
the composition of the "Farewell Address." The quiet 
dignity, lofty ideals, and inherent modesty of expression in 
the Address are characteristic of the great personality who 



48 History of American Literature 

signed it. In the "Farewell Address" Washington strongly- 
advocated the doctrine of the isolation of the American 
republic from European politics. In particular he warned 
the young nation to avoid entangling alliances with Euro- 
pean gove'rnments. It is worth while noting, in passing, 
that we have entirely outgrown this policy, as is clearly 
evidenced by the prominent part America has played in 
the Great World War. 

Thomas Paine: "Common Sense" and "The Crisis." 

Among the essayists and journalists who took part in the 
agitation for American independence, Thomas Paine (1737- 
iSog) deserves to be remembered as one of the most influen- 
tial and, from a literary point of view, one of the best. A 
native of England, in 1774 he came to America near middle 
life, bearing a letter of recommendation from Benjamin 
Franklin. He secured journalistic employment in Phila- 
delphia and at once plunged into th*e agitation for complete 
independence by writing his powerful pamphlet called 
"Common Sense" (1776). Tyler designates it as "the first 
open and unqualified argument in championship of the 
doctrine of American independence." It took the public 
by storm. Every one was asking who could be the author 
of this impressive and bold pamphlet. Some attributed it 
to Samuel Adams and some to Benjamin Franklin. Paine 
kept his indentity concealed, for it might have cost him his 
life to have acknowledged the authorship of this bold appeal 
to the colonists. He accepted employment in some clerical 
capacity in the army, and in this connection, soon after the 
appearance of his first pamphlet, he projected a series of 
articles under the general title of "The Crisis," the numbers 
to appear whenever he could bring them out. The first 
number, published in 1776, opened with the now familiar 
sentence, "These are the times that try men's souls." The 
first paragraph continues in the following strain, a passage 
worth repeating in any period of national crisis: 

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and 
the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his 
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of 
man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we 
have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more 
ogrlious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too 



"The Revolutionary Period" 49 

lightly: It is clearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven 
knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be 
strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly 
rated. 

This is good, strong prose. The steady flow of the language 
and the nervous energy of the thought give the style a 
vitality and piquancy that make it at once attractive and 
convincing. There is no subtlety, no subterfuge, but a 
frank and direct, if somewhat rhetorical, appeal to the 
common sense of all readers. There is no doubt that at 
the critical time when they were put forth, Paine 's pamph- 
lets, as Washington himself acknowledged, were of great 
value in nerving the patriots to fight on against the terrible 
odds which confronted them. There were sixteen numbers 
of "The Crisis" from 1776 to 1783, and together they make 
up a valuable contribution to our political literature. 

Paine' s later works: "The Rights of Man" and "The Age 
of Reason." In his later life Paine lost much of the prestige 
which his Revolutionary pamphlets had won for him in this 
country. He went to England and published a fiery reply 
to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, calling it 
The Rights of Alan ( 1 79 1 ) . Then he slipped away to France, 
as if to avoid the storm which the publication of his reply 
raised in England. In France he mingled freely with the 
revolutionists in the terrible days of bloodshed and destruc- 
tion, and was himself imprisoned and sentenced to be 
executed. While in prison he wrote The Age of Reason 
(1794), an attack on the Bible and the Christian religion, 
and thus brought on himself the opprobrium which has 
followed him to this day. After his release from prison he 
returned to America, where he died in 1809. Unfortunately 
Paine is more frequently referred to as an enemy of Christi- 
anity than as a patriot. He was undoubtedly a sincere 
lover of liberty, and we should give him full credit for the 
bold fight he made for our own independence and for human 
rights in general. 

St. John de Crevecoeur. One more prose work deserves 
mention here. This is "The Letters from an American 
Farmer" (1782) by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. Born 
of a noble family in Normandy in 1731, Crevecoeur was 
educated in England, from his sixteenth to his twenty-third 



50 History of American Literature 

year, when he removed to America to engage in farming 
in New England and later in Pennsylvania. His "Letters 
from an American Farmer" represents an entirely different 
type of prose from the pamphlets we have been considering. 
Cr^vecoeur had no special plea to make either for religious 
or political liberty or to encourage immigrants to the colo- 
nies. What he attempted to do was to give a pleasing 
literary portrayal of rural life and scenes in America. There 
is an idyllic simplicity and charm in his treatment of the 
natural beauties of American scenery and of the simple 
pastoral life of the American farmer. His interpretation is 
that of a pleased and interested observer rather than that 
of an advocate or partisan. From an esthetic and literary 
point of view Crevecoeur's book is doubtless superior to 
any other prose volume written in America during the 
eighteenth century. In these stirring years of the twen- 
tieth century we may read with peculiar interest Creve- 
coeur's definition of an American and his prophecy of the 
future greatness of the American people. 

What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither an 
European, no/ the descendent of an European: Hence that strange 
mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could 
point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, 
whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose 
present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an 
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and 
manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, 
the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes 
an American by being received in the broad lap of our great "alma 
mater." Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of 
men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in 
the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying 
along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry, 
which began long since in the east. They will finish the great circle. 
The Americans were once scattered all over Europe. Here they are 
incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has 
ever appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power 
of the different climates they inhabit. The American ought therefore to 
love his country much better than that wherein either he or his fore- 
fathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow, with equal 
steps, the progress of his labor. His labor is founded on the basis of 
nature — self-interest: Can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and 



"The Revolutionary Period" 51 

-children, who before in vain demanded of him a morsel of bread, now, 
fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields 
whence exuberant crops are to arise, to feed and to clothe them all, 
without any part being claimed either by a despotic prince, a rich 
abbot, or a mighty lord. Here religion demands but little of him, — 
a small voluntary salary to the minister, and gratitude to God: Can 
he refuse these? The American is a new man, who acts upon new 
principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opin- 
ions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and 
useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded 
by ample subsistence. This is an American. 

The Poetry 

Revolutionary ballads. The poetry of the Revolutionary 
period rises above mediocrity. There were a number of 
ballads and patriotic songs which were popular in their 
day, and served well their purpose of amusing and cheering 
our ancestors, but hardly one of them is worthy of a perma- 
nent place in our literature. "The Song of American 
Liberty" by John Dickinson has already been mentioned. 
"Yankee Doodle," or "The Yankee's Return from Camp," 
originally written by Edward Bangs, a Harvard student, 
had a typical ballad experience in its transitions, being sung 
in many varied versions to the delight of citizens and sol- 
diers during the hard struggle for independence. As a tune 
•and as a popular ballad it still retains its hold on the public. 

Father and I went down to camp 

Along with Captain Gooding 
And there we see the men and boys 

As thick as hasty pudding. 
(chorus) 
Yankee Doodle, keep it up, 

Yankee Doodle, dandy, 
Mind the music and the step, 

And with the girls be handy. 

Another typical ballad in the meter of "Yankee Doodle," 
literally bubbling over with satisfaction and delight at the 
discomfiture of the British general, the Earl of Cornwallis, 
is called "The Dance," and begins. 



52 History of American Literature 

Cornwallis led a country dance, 

The like was never seen, sir, 
Much retrograde and much advance, 

And all with General Greene, sir. 

They rambled up and rambled down, 
Joined hands and off they run, sir, 

Our General Greene to Charlestown, 
The earl to Wilmington, sir. 

The ballad of "Nathan Hale," or "Hale in the Bush," is a 
sort of refined or dressed up literary ballad, more dignified 
and self-conscious, and hence less truly a popular ballad. 
It relates in a remarkably stimulating strain the capture 
and execution of the Revolutionary hero named in the 
title. 

The breezes went steadily thro' the tall pines, 
A-saying "oh! hu-ush!" a-saying "oh! hu-ush!" 

As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse. 
For Haie in the bush, for Hale in the bush. 

"Keep still!" said the thrush as she nestled her young. 
In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road. 

"For the tyrants are near, and with them appear. 
What bodes us no good, what bodes us no good." 

Francis Hopkinson: "The Battle of the Kegs." Francis 
Hopkinson (i 737-1 791) of Philadelphia, signer of the 
Declaration of Independence from New Jersey and holder 
of important political offices in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 
among them the United States district judgeship for Penn- 
sylvania, was the author of numerous satiric trifles and 
extended political allegories which brought him wide popu- 
larity in his own day. His satirical ballad, "The Battle 
of the Kegs," is still delightful reading. It was written to 
satirize the British troops who, when they discovered 
certain "infernal machines" in the form of kegs sent down 
the river by the patriots to annoy the British ships at Phila- 
delphia, bravely began to fire on every floating object which 
they saw in the river. 




INDEPENDENCE HALL AS SEEN FROM INDEPENDENCE SQUARE 



'^The Revolutionary Period" 53 

The cannons roar from shore to shore; 

The small-arms make a rattle, 
Since wars began, I'm sure no man 

E'er saw so strange a battle .... 

The kegs, 'tis said, tho' strongly made 

Of rebel staves and hoops, Sir, 
Could not oppose their pow'rful foes. 
Could conq'ering British troops. Sir. 

From morn to night these men of might 

Display'd amazing courage; 
And when the sun was fairly down, 

Retir'd to sup their porrage .... 

Such feats did they perform that day 

Against these wicked kegs. Sir, 
That years to come, if they get home, 

They'll make their boast and brags. Sir. 

Two of Judge Hopkinson's political allegories in prose were 
decidedly amusing to his contemporaries, and though they 
are rarely read today, they were of considerable importance 
in the development of American prose. "The Pretty 
Story" deals with the conflict between England, "the old 
farm," and America, "the new farm," and their "wives," 
the English Parliament and the colonial governments 
respectively. "The New Roof" is a presentation of the 
new form of government under the federal Constitution. 
Francis Hopkinson's son, Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1S42), 
wrote, in 1798 the words and music of the well-known 
patriotic song "Hail, Columbia." 

The Hartford Wits. A school of writers with a more or 
less well-defined literary purpose sprang up in Connecticut 
during the Revolution. There were ten or a dozen ambitious 
young college men, well versed in the classics and in the 
literary methods of the English writers of the eighteenth 
century, particularly those of Pope and Samuel Butler. 
They wrote political satires, long allegories and epics, and 
some religious poetry, and tried in a sort of concerted way 
to establish a standard of formal literature in America 



54 History of American Literature 

similar to the classical school in England. Most of these 
young literary aspirants were Yale men. Hartford rather 
than New Haven was the chief center of their later activities, 
and so they came to be known as the "Hartford Wits." 
Only three of them need demand our attention here — 
John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and Joel Barlow. 

John Trumbull. John Trumbull (i 750-1831) was the 
most popular and probably the most gifted of these three 
Hartford Wits. He was born in Connecticut in 1750. He 
showed remarkable precocity, learning to read before he 
was three years old, completing the Bible at the age of 
four, and learning many of Watts's hymns and composing 
similar verses himself even before he had learned to write. 
When his father was tutoring a lad of seventeen who was 
preparing to enter Yale College, the boy of seven, loitering 
about the room, showed more proficiency in his ability ta 
read and construe Latin than did the youth of seventeen. 
He was allowed to take the lessons regularly thereafter, 
'and he passed the entrance examinations at Yale with 
apparent ease at this early age. He did not enter college 
until he was thirteen, however, spending the intervening 
years in doing a considerable amount of reading in the 
classics. He graduated at Yale when he was seventeen, 
and then spent three years more in general reading and study, 
taking his master's degree when he was twenty. During 
these years he began to write both poetry and prose, mostly 
in imitation of the eighteenth-century English writers. 
With his friend Timothy Dwight he contributed essays to 
two periodicals in imitation of Addison's Spectator, namely, 
The Medler and The Correspondent. Shortly after gradua- 
tion Trumbull became a tutor at Yale, and during this 
period he wrote a long satiric poem on the hollow and 
impractical type of education then offered, especially for 
ministers and women, calling his production The Progress 
of Dulness. It consisted of three cantos, the first on "The 
Adventures of Tom Brainless," the second on "The Life 
and Character of Dick Hairbrain," and the third on "The 
Adventtires of Miss Harriet Simper." 

"McFingal." Trumbull's most famous work, "McFingal," 
was begun in 1776 but not completed until 1782. It is a 
burlesque epic, written in the sing-song octosyllabic coup- 
lets which the English writer Samuel Butler had so success- 



"The Revolutionary Period'' 55 

fully employed in Hudibras, his satire on the Puritans. So 
accurate was the imitation that several of Trumbull's 
couplets have been quoted as Butler's, especially this one: 

J*4o man e'er felt the halter draw, 
With good opinion of the law. 

McFingal is a long-winded Tory constable, or squire, who 
thinks he is a great orator and a great power in colonial 
politics. Trumbull puts some extraordinarily ridiculous and 
blatant speeches into the pseudo-hero's mouth, and finally 
makes him the butt of the patriots' humorous wrath. In 
its finished form McFingal consists of four cantos, the first 
two being devoted to the "Town Meeting," morning and 
afternoon; the third, to "The Liberty Pole" or McFingal's 
attack on the patriots' flag pole, his elevation to the top of 
it by a rope hooked to his middle, and his subsequent tarring 
and feathering; the fourth, to "The Vision," or McFingal's 
"second sight" in a dark cellar, in which he is forewarned of 
all the defeats and disasters which were to befall the Tories 
during the coming years. Fortunately for the accuracy of 
this so-called "vision," Trumbull waited until the defeat of 
Cornwallis in 1782 to write this canto, thus learning the 
actual sequence of events before making his prophecies. 

Nature of the satire. The poem is full of classical and 
historical lore and contains many allusions now unintelligible 
except with the help of the footnotes. Particularly effective 
are the burlesque imitations of and allusions to the great 
world epics, such as the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the 
Aeneid of Virgil, and the Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained 
of Milton. The following passage from the third canto, 
describing McFingal's capture and elevation on the liberty 
pole, will illustrate the mock-epic style and the broad humor 
of the famous old political satire which so greatly amused 
our Revolutionary sires. 

Swift turn'd M'Fingal at the view, 
And call'd to aid th' attendant crew, 
In vain; the Tories all had run. 
When scarce the fight was well begun; 
Their setting wigs he saw decreas'd 
Far in th' horizon tow'rd the west 
Amazed he view'd the shameful sight, 
And saw no refuge, but in flight : 



56 History of- American Literature 

But age unwieldy check'd his pace, 

Though fear had wing'd his flying race; 

For not a trifling prize at stake; 

No less than great M'Fingal's back. 

With legs and arms he work'd his course, 

Like rider that outgoes his horse. 

And labor'd hard to get away, as 

Old Satan struggling on through chaos; 

'Till looking back, he spied in rear 

The spade-arm'd chief advanced too near: 

Then stopp'd and seized a stone, that lay 

An ancient landmark near the way; 

Nor shall we as old Bards have done. 

Affirm it weigh'd an hundred ton: 

But such a stone, as at a shift 

A modern might suffice to lift, 

Since men, to credit their enigmas. 

Are dwindled down to dwarfs and pigmies, 

And giants exiled with their cronies 

To Brobdignags and Patagonias. 

But while our Hero turn'd him round. 

And tugg'd to raise it from the ground. 

The fatal spade discharged a blow 

Tremendous on his rear below: 

His bent knee fail'd, and void of strength, 

Stretch'd on the ground his manly length. 

Like ancient oak o'erturn'd, he lay. 

Or tower to tempests fall'n a prey. 

Or mountain sunk with all his pines. 

Or flow'r the plow to dust consigns. 

And more things else — but all men know 'em, 

If slightly versed in epic poem. 

At once the crew, at this dread crisis. 

Fall on, and bind him ere he rises. 

And with loud shouts and joyful soul, 

Conduct him prisoner to the pole. 

When now the mob in lucky hour 

Had got their en'mies in their power, 

They flrst proceed, by grave command, 

To take the Constable in hand. 

Then from the pole's sublimest top 

The active crew let down the rope, 

At once its other end in haste bind 



"The Revolutionary Period" 57 

And make it fast upon his waistband; 
Till like the earth, as stretch'd on tenter, 
He hung self-balanced on his center. 
Then upwards, all hands hoisting sail. 
They swung him, like a keg of ale. 
Till to the pinnacle in height 
He vaulted, like balloon or kite. 

Timothy D wight. Timothy D wight (17 52-1817), another 
of the Hartford Wits, was associated with Trtimbull in his 
early Hterary efforts. A grandson of Jonathan Edwards, 
Dwight was bom in Massachusetts in 1752; was educated 
at Yale, where he was for a time a tutor; and finally became 
a chaplain in the Continental Army. At the end of the 
Revolutionary war he became the pastor of the church at 
Greenfield Hill, Fairfield, Connecticut, and from 1795 to 
his death in 181 7 he was the president of Yale College. He 
was a profuse prose writer, committing many of his sermons, 
the records of his travels, and his commonplace observations 
on contemporary life to paper, and a good portion of them 
also to print. He was an ambitious poet, composing a long 
Biblical epic in heroic couplets, The Conquest of Canaan, 
and another long poem of seven parts which he called 
Greenfield Hill. The different parts of this last-named work 
were professedly written in imitation of well known English 
poets, such as Pope, Butler, Goldsmith, and others. None 
of Dwight's poetry is read today by any except specialists, 
with perhaps a single exception in the instance of the patri- 
otic lyric, "Columbia," which was highly admired during 
the Revolution and which has since been frequently reprinted 
in lyric and patriotic collections. The closing stanza will 
illustrate the somewhat vaunting rhetoric. 

Thus, as down a lone valley, with cedars o'erspread. 
From war's dread confusion I pensively strayed, 
The gloom from the face of fair heav'n retired; 
The winds ceased to murmur; the thunders expired; 
Perfumes as of Eden, flowed sweetly along, 
And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung: 
Columbia, Columbia, to glory arise, 
The queen of the world, and the child of the skies! 

Still better known, because it has been preserved in our 
familiar church songs, is Dwight's hymn, "I Love thy 
Kingdom, Lord." 



S8 History of American Literature 

Joel Barlow. Joel Barlow (1754-1812), the third impor- 
tant member of the Yale group, was born in' Connecticut, 
graduated at Yale in 17 78, and before the end of the Revolu- 
tion became a chaplain in a Massachusetts brigade. He 
engaged in several business enterprises connected with 
publication and book selling, compiling, among other things, 
a psalm book for use in Congregational churches. He began 
a patriotic epic called The Vision of Columbus, and published 
it in 1787, and twenty years later expanded it into the 
Columhiad (1807), a poem in eleven long books written in 
heroic couplets. In its style this so-called epic is more 
bombastic and rhetorical than sublime or inspired. Pro- 
fessor Bronson calls it "a stage-coach epic, lumbering and 
slow." In this ambitious effort, which he innocently com- 
pared with the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, Barlow 
has become the stock example of an author who overesti- 
mates his strength and attempts things entirely beyond his 
compass. In his later years Barlow went abroad and 
engaged in pamphleteering in England and in political 
intrigues in France. He was appointed to several diplo- 
matic posts, finally losing his life in the famous retreat from 
Moscow, where he had gone in an effort to reach Napoleon 
and present his credentials as a representative from the 
United States. A few years before his death Barlow was 
living in France, and in Savoy he was served with a portion 
of his favorite dish made from American maize, or Indian 
corn, and he at once composed "The Hasty Pudding," a 
long mock-heroic poem. It seems that he could write the 
mock-epic better than the serious epic, for by the irony of 
fate, this playful bit of fancy, because of the fact that it is 
lighted up by a touch of the comic, is to-day far better 
known than the ponderous epic upon which Barlow based 
his hope for fame. The following brief quotation suggests 
strongly that the meter and style are modelled on Gold- 
smith's "The Traveller," though the mock-heroic tone is 
evident : 

Dear Hasty Pudding, what unpromised joy 
Expands my heart to meet thee in Savoy! 
Doom'd o'er the earth through devious paths to roam, 
Each dime my country and each house my home, 
My soul is soothed, my cares have found an end, 
I greet my long-lost, unforgotten friend. 



"The Revolutionary Period" 59 

Philip Freneau: his early life. If Yale was the source of 
the most notable school of poets during the Revolutionary 
period, Princeton deserves the credit of sending forth the 
one poet of real genius whom America produced before 
the nineteenth century — namely, Philip Freneau (1752- 
1832). Of Huguenot descent, Freneau was born in New 
York City but at an early age he was taken to New 
Jersey, and he is therefore usually reckoned among the 
worthies of the last-named state. He was educated in the 
schools of New York and at the College of New Jersey 
(Princeton), where he was graduated with distinction in 
177 1. He began writing poetry while he was in college, 
composing a long poem in heroic couplets on "The Prophet 
Jonah"; and in collaboration with his classmate, Hugh 
Henry Brackenridge, the author of Modern Chivalry,^ he 
composed a patriotic poem called "The Rising Glory of 
America," in the form of a colloquy, which he and Bracken- 
ridge jointly read as a commencement ode at their gradua- 
tion exercises. These two friends with other classmates, 
William Bradford and James Madison, were intensely 
American in their sympathies, and together they formed a 
Whig society and wrote satires against the Tories. 

Sailor, Editor and Poet. Freneau engaged in teaching 
for some time after his graduation, and then went to New 
York, where he published a number of polemical and political 
essays and many satires against the Tories and ■ patriotic 
poems in favor of American liberty. Being of an advent- 
urous turn of mind, he determined to go to sea. He shipped 
for Jamaica and soon became a proficient sailor. He 
continued to write poetry, composing several long poems 
on subjects suggested by his travels, as for example, "The 
Jamaica Funeral" and "The Beauties of Santa Cruz." 
"The House of Night," an imaginative poem on death, is 
another notable production which belongs to this period. 
Finally he was captured by the British and confined for 
nearly two months in prison ships, an experience which 
inspired one of his most graphic and savage satires, "The 
Prison Ship." 

These Prison Ships where pain and horror dwell. 
Where death in tenfold vengeance holds his reign. 
And injur'd ghosts, yet unaveng'd, complain. 

iSee p. 63. 



6o History of American Literature 

After his release he returned to Mount Pleasant, the family 
estate near Middletown Point, New Jersey, and again took 
up editorial work, becoming for several years the chief 
contributor to the Freeman s Journal published at Phila- 
delphia. About this time he composed some of his best 
poems, notably the lament for the patriots who fell under 
General Greene at Eutaw Springs, and some of his best 
sea poems, including "Captain Jones's Invitation," "The 
Sea Voyage," and "The Hurricane." After another period 
of adventurous sea-faring as captain of several trading 
vessels, about 1791 Freneau returned to the shore to 
take up editorial work first on the New York Daily Adver- 
tiser and shortly afterwards on the National Gazette, a 
journal which he founded in Philadelphia. He naturally 
became involved in the bitter political discussions of the 
times, taking sides with Jefferson and against Hamilton, 
and later, on account of his pro-French sentiments in con- 
nection with the Genet affair, arousing the enmity of Wash- 
ington himself. Freneau sought relief from these political 
turmoils by going to sea. He eventually returned to Mount 
Pleasant and lived on through the War of 18 12 and the two 
following decades, finally losing his life in a fierce snow 
storm in 1832. 

Freneau' s Nature Lyrics. Freneau 's most purely poet- 
ical work is a nimiber of really excellent nature lyrics and 
imaginative poems. Professor Pattee^ speaks eloquently of 
the evidences of early romanticism in Freneau's poetry, 
pointing out examples of early romantic influences in "The 
House of Night," "one of the earliest poems in that dimly 
lighted region which was soon to be exploited by Coleridge 
and Poe"; in his sea poems; in his imaginative treatment of 
Indian life, as in his "Indian Death Song" and "The Indian 
Burying-Ground" ; and above all in his nature lyrics, which 
were distinctly in the Words worthian vein, as "The Dying 
Elm," "The Sleep of Plants," "To a Honey Bee," "To a 
Caty-did," and particularly in "The Wild Honeysuckle," a 
flawless nature lyric written in 1786, at least a dozen years 
before Wordsworth and Coleridge published the Lyrical 
Ballads (1798). "The Wild Honeysuckle," the one almost 
perfect art lyric produced in America before the nineteenth 
century, is worthy of full quotation here. 

^ Poems of Philip Freneau, 3 vols. Ed. by F. L. Pattee, Princeton, 1902. 



"The Revolutionary Period" 6i 

THE WILD HONEYSUCKLE 

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 

Hid in this silent, dull retreat. 
Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, 
Unseen thy little branches greet; 

No roving foot shall crush thee here, 
No busy hand provoke a tear. 

By Nature's self in white arrayed. 

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 
And planted here the guardian shade, 
And sent soft waiters murmuring by; 
Thus quietly thy summer goes, 
Thy days declining to repose. 

Smit with those charms, that must decay, 

I grieve to see your future doom; 
They died — nor were those flowers more gay, 
The flowers that did in Eden bloom; 
Unpitying frosts and Autumn's power 
Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

From morning suns and evening dews 

At first thy little being came: 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
For when you die you are the same; 
The space between, is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower. 

Estimate of Freneau. In our enthusiasm for the good 
quahties of this poem and other exceUent lyrics of Freneau's, 
we are hkely to overestimate the work of this early American, 
especially when we recall that the English poet Campbell 
borrowed a line from "The Indian Burying Ground," 

"The hunter and the deer — a shade," 

and Scott enthusiastically praised "The Lament on the 
Patriots- who Fell at Eutaw Springs," himself using a 
line from this poem in the third canto of Marmion; 
but Freneau must after all be ranked a second-rate poet. 
The following paragraph from Professor Pattee's introduc- 
tion to his edition of Freneau's Poems is a judicious 
summary. "As to the absolute literary value of Freneau's 
literary remains, there is room for honest difference of 



62 History of American Literature 

opinion. He certainly is not, if we judge him from what 
he actually produced, a great poet. But he must in fairness 
be viewed against the background of his age and environ- 
ment. Nature had equipped him as she has equipped 
few other men. He had the poet's creative imagination; 
he had an exquisite sense of the beautiful; and he had a 
realization of his own poetic endowments that kept him 
during a long life constantly true to the muse. Scarcely a 
month went by in all his life, from his early boyhood, that 
was not marked by poetic composition. Few poets, even 
in later and more auspicious days, have devoted their lives 
more assiduously to song." ^ 

Drama and Fiction 

National drama. The drama of the Revolutionary era is 
mainly significant for its historical value in reflecting the 
spirit of the times. Thomas Godfrey's The Prince of 
Parthia, written about 1759 and published in 1765, we 
mentioned at the close of the colonial period as the first 
literary drama composed in America. It was played at 
Philadelphia in 1767, and was, according to Seilhamer, 
author of History of the American Theater, the first American 
play that was actually staged by a professional company. 
In the meantime, of course, many English plays had been 
acted much earlier; as early as 1715 some reference to a 
theater and plays acted in Williamsburg, Virginia, have 
been noted; and English plays b}^ a regular company were 
acted in New York as early as 1732, in Charleston, South 
Carolina, as early as 1734, and in Philadelphia as early as 
1749. 

Plays on American subjects. Numerous plays dealing 
with American subjects were written during the period of 
the Revolution. "Ponteach, or The Savages of America," 
a play appearing in 1766 and dealing in a satiric way with 
the white man's cruel and unjust treatment of the simple- 
minded Indians, has been ascribed on uncertain evidence 
to Robert Rogers, an English officer in the French and Indian 
War. Mrs. Mercy Warren (1728-18 14), of Massachusetts, 
the sister of James Otis, wrote several plays on American 
subjects, the best of which is "The Group" (1775), a comedy 



1 Poems of Philip Freneau, vol. I , Introduction, p. xcviii. 



"The Revolutionary Period" 63 

satirizing the loyalists. Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748- 
18 1 6), of Pennsylvania, the friend and classmate of Philip 
Freneau and James Madison at the College of New Jersey, 
was the author of the best literary dramas that appeared 
in the period of the actual struggle for independence; they 
are, however, more properly dramatic poems or closet plays 
than acting dramas. The titles of his plays are "The Battle 
of Bunker's Hill" (1776) and "The Death of General Mont- 
gomery" (1777). Brackenridge is also the author of 
Modern Chivalry, or The Adventures of Captain Farrago and 
Teague 0' Regan, his Servant (1792-93-97), a burlesque 
after the manner of Don Quixote, satirizing post-Revolu- 
tionary customs and events. This prose narrative, and 
Jeremy Belknap's "The Foresters" (1792), an allegorical 
narrative dealing with the relations of the colonies to the 
English government, have been pointed out as the best 
early types of fiction in America. 

William Dunlap. Another dramatist of some distinction 
was William Dunlap (1766-183 9), of New York. He was 
a practical playwright and theater manager and our first 
historian of the drama, and his influence was considerable 
in his day. He wrote some original plays, such as "The 
Father of an Only Child" (1789), a comedy, and "Andre" 
(1798)^ a historical play in blank verse, and made many 
adaptations of foreign plays for the American stage. 

Royall Tyler. One other name should be mentioned in 
connection with early American drama, that of Royall Tyler 
(1757-1826), who was born and educated in Massachusetts, 
and later became chief justice of Vermont. He wrote "The 
Contrast," a comedy which was acted with great success 
in New York in 1786 and published four years later. It is 
based on the contrast between native American worth and 
the silly imitation of foreign conventions. The first typical 
stage Yankee, in the person of the shrewd New England 
farmer, Jonathan, speaking in his native dialect, appears 
in this play. Tyler wrote a number of other plays and 
farces, and also a prose narrative of adventure called The 
Algerine Captive (1797), which may be classed with our 
early novels. 



lit is interesting to note that Freneau also wrote a dramatic fragment 
on Major Andre's unfortunate experiences, calling it "The Spy." Dunlap's 
"Andre" is reprinted in A. H. Quinn's Representative American Plays (1917). 



64 History of American Literature 

Sentimental novels. A number of tearful and senti- 
mental novels had already been published, principally by a 
school of women writers. Among these were Mrs. Sarah 
Morton's The Power of Sympathy, or The Triumph of 
Nature Founded in Truth (1789); Mrs. Susanna Rowson's 
Charlotte Temple, A Tale of Truth (1790), Trials of the Human 
Heart (1795), and many other stories; and Mrs. Hannah 
Foster's The Coquette, or The History of Eliza Wharton, a 
Novel Founded on Fact (1797). Of the many sentimental 
novels of the time, Charlotte Temple, which was the most 
popular in its day and which has proved the most tenacious 
of life, being republished in over one hundred editions up 
to 1905, is typical. It is the pathetic story of love and 
innocence, betrayal, desertion, and death from a broken 
heart. These highly colored and overwrought narratives, 
made up largely of unnatural situations and unreal charac- 
ters usually said to be based on truth, and designed to 
move the reader to tears and at the same time teach some 
moral or inculcate some paramount virtue, are now solely 
valuable as an indication of the taste of the times and as 
an American example of the English sentimental school led 
by Samuel Richardson, the author of Pamela, or Virtue 
Rewarded. 

Charles Brockden Brown: the mystery and horror 
school. Before the end of the century the American novel 
was to find its first serious exponent in a Philadelphian, 
Charles Brockden Brown (i 771-18 10). He was descended 
from a Quaker family, educated in the schools of Phila- 
delphia, and prepared for the profession of law. Being 
strongly drawn toward literature, he deserted the law and 
turned to writing as a means of earning his livelihood, thus 
becoming the first man in America who adopted literature 
as a profession. He was never robust, and he devoted him- 
self so steadily to study, even from his early boyhood, that 
his health was permanently impaired. He moved to New 
York for a time, and here published his first work. The 
Dialogue of Alcuin (1797), a vigorous pamphlet on the rights 
of woman. He was professedly writing under the influence of 
William Godwin, the bold English radical thinker, the author 
of a '^B.vcvpihXet, Political J iistice,'Sin6.Caleh Williams, a romance 
in which the miscarriage of justice is discussed. The influ- 
ence of Godwin and other members of the highly romantic 



"The Revolutionary Period" 65 

school of English novelists known as the horror school, is, 
in fact, evident in all of Brown's work. Horace Walpole's 
The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Romance, Lewis's The Monk, 
and Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho are the stock 
examples of this English horror school. Brown follows 
them in conjuring up mysteries and supernatural situations 
based on some reasonable or pseudo-scientific grounds. 
His first novel, Wieland, or The Transformation (1798), 
belongs distinctly to the horror school, and we may analyze 
it as a typical illustration of the five other novels which 
followed from his pen in rapid succession. 

"Wieland." Wieland, usually considered as Brown's 
most powerful novel, is the storj^ of a cultured family of 
Germans who live in Philadelphia and whose happy domestic 
life is interrupted by certain strange and apparently super- 
natural sounds. These distressing circumstances are par- 
tially compensated for by the appearance of a pleasing and 
polite stranger named Carwin. Wieland's father, a religious 
enthusiast, is said to have died from spontaneous combus- 
tion, an uncanny and really impossible form of disease in 
which the body becomes so violently heated from within 
that it is set on fire and consumed. The son inherits a 
superstitious trend of mind and becomes himself a religious 
fanatic. Hence he is well prepared by heredity and tem- 
perament to answer the strange and seductive voices heard 
throughout the dwelling. Wieland is called upon to sacrifice 
his beautiful wife and daughter, and he proceeds to his 
crimes on the supposition that he is answering the commands 
of God. After committing the double murder, Wieland is 
confined in a madman's cell, from which he eventually 
escapes and attempts to murder other members of his 
family. He then learns that he has been duped by the 
mysterious stranger Carwin, who through his powers of 
ventriloquism has led Wieland to murder his family. When 
he realizes what he has done, Wieland kills himself, and the 
stranger disappears. The story ends with the marriage of 
Wieland's sister, the narrator of the tale, to one of the minor 
characters. It can be readily discerned by even a casual 
reader that the plot is loosely constructed and that the 
motivation of the action is entirely insufficient and uncon- 
vincing. But Brown's power of portraying the horrible, 
the supernatural, the terrible, is natural and spontaneous, 



66 History of American Literature 

and there is no lack of interest and excitement in the reading 
of his story. 

Browns other tales. Orrnond, or The Secret Witness, 
appeared in 1799, and Arthur Mervyn, or Memoirs of the 
Year lygj, in two volumes in 1799 and 1800. Both of these 
stories deal with the terrible yellow fever epidemics which 
ravaged Philadelphia in the last decade of the century. 
Brown had personally experienced the horrors of the disease, 
being attacked by it while he was living in New York, and 
his descriptions are extremely powerful and realistic. Poe 
himself has hardly surpassed Brown in the portrayal of these 
hideous and repulsive scenes of disease and death, though 
Poe's artistic sense, of course, is superior to Brown's. Edgar 
Huntly, or The Adventures of a Sleep-Walker, published in 
1801, shows Brown's descriptive powers to the best advan- 
tage, especially in the portrayal of the gloomy caves and 
wild natural scenes which the author had visited in his long 
walks about the environs of Philadelphia. In this novel 
Brown clearly intended, as he states in a prefatory note, 
to make his work distincth^ American in every particular. 
He introduced romantic incidents from Indian life and war- 
fare — thus preceding Cooper in this field — described with 
accurate details the exact flora and fauna of the wild Ameri- 
can background, and gave vivid pictures of primitive 
customs of both the Indian and the European population 
of America. Clara Howard (1801) and Jane Talbot (1801) 
complete the list of Brown's novels. These last two are 
loosely constructed love stories and are distinctly inferior 
to the earlier romances of their author. 

Last days: general estimate of Brown. Brown was engaged 
in editorial work on magazines and annuals at Philadelphia, 
and during his later years he occupied himself with the com- 
pilation of geographical and historical works which he left 
unfinished at his death in iSio. He had long been a sufferer 
from consumption, and in the later years his creative powers 
seem to have been largely sapped by the disease. While 
he was not a great writer, he was our first notable novelist, 
a forerunner of Cooper, Poe, and Hawthorne. He deserves 
to be remembered also as our first purely professional 
author. His romances are still read to some extent by the 
general reader, and his work has been generously praised 



"The Revolutionary Period" 67 

by his early biographers, William Dunlap and W. H. Pres- 
cott, and by the later historians of our literature. After 
Franklin, who must be excepted on account of his immortal 
Autobiography, we may place the novelist Charles Brockden 
Brown beside the poet Philip Freneau, as one of the two 
most important literary figures in the first two centuries 
of our history. 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES SUITABLE FOR HIGH 
SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND OUTSIDE READING 

Special Reference Books for Revolutionary Literature 1 

(For General References, see end of Part I, p. 33) 

I. History of Literature and Selections 

*Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783; 2 
vols., Putnam, N. Y., 1897. 

Patterson, The Spirit of the American Revolution as Revealed in tlie 
Poetry of the Period: A Study of American Patriotic Verse from 
1760 to 1783; Badger, Boston, 1915. 

LosHE, The Early American Novel; Lemcke & Buechner, New York, 
1908. 

*Cairns, Selections from Early American Writers, 1607-1800. (See p. 34.) 

E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of American Literature, 
(See p. 33.) 

*Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature, Vols. 
Ill and IV. (See p. 34.) 

*QuiNN, editor, Representative American Plays; Century, N. Y., 191 7. 
(The first three plays are from the Colonial and Revolutionary 
Period.) 

*Stedman, An American Anthology, 1787-1900; Houghton Mifflin, 
Boston, 1900. 

Stedman, Poets of America; Houghton Mifflin, Boston. (Ch. II treats 
in a scintillating, rapid-fire style of the growth of the American 
school of poetry.) 

Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution; Appleton, N. Y., 
1856. 

Eggleston, American War Ballads and Lyrics; Putnam, N. Y., i88g. 

Stevenson, Poems of American History; Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 
1908. 

iThe important works of authors treated in the body of the text are not 
listed here. 

* These volumes are especially valuable for high-school libraries. 



68 History of American Literature 

Matthews, Poems of American Patriotism; Scribner's, N. Y., 1898. 

Erskine, The Leading American Novelists; Henry Holt, New York, 
19 10. (Contains a chapter on Charles Brockden Brown.) 

2. Later Poetry Dealing ivith Revolutionary Times 
Longfellow, "Paul Revere's Ride." 

Bryant, "Song of Marion's Men" (compare Simms' song on the same 
theme in The Partisan). 

Read, "The Rising." 

Emerson, "Concord Hymn," "Boston Hymn." 

Whittier, "Lexington," "Centennial Hymn." 

Holmes, "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill," "Ballad of the Boston 
Tea-Party," "Lexington." 

Finch, "Nathan Hale." 

Lanier, "Psalm of the West." 

Hayne, "Macdonald's Raid — 1780." 

(See Burton E. Stevenson's Poems of American History, Houghton Mifflin, 
Boston, 1908, for fuller lists of poems dealing with the Revolutionary 
Period.) 

J. Later Fiction Dealing with Revolutionary Times 

Cooper, The Spy, The Pilot, Lionel Lincoln; or, The Leaguer of Boston 

Kennedy, Horse-Shoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendency. 

Simms, The Partisan: A Tale of the Revolution, The Scout, Eutaw, 
Katherine Walton, etc. 

Cooke, The Virginia Comedians, Henry St. John. 

Thompson, Green Mountain Boys, The Rangers. 

Coffin, The Boys of 'y6. 

Butterworth, The Patriot Schoolmaster. 

Eggleston, a Carolina Cavalier. 

Thackeray, The Virginians. 

Craddock, The Story of Old Fort Loudon. 

Ford, Janice Meredith. 

Jewett, The Tory Lover. 

Atherton, The Conquerer (Alexander Hamilton.) 

Allen, The Choir Invisible. 

Churchill, Richard Carvel. 

Mitchell, Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker; The Red City. 

Frederic, In the Valley. 



''The Revolutionary Period" 69 

Henty, True to the Old Flag. 

Stevenson, B. G., ^ Soldier of Virginia. 

4. Essays and Historical Works Dealing with the Revolutionary Times. 

FiSKE, American Revolution; also, for young readers, The War of 
Independence. 

Hart, Formation of the Union, Camp and Fireside of the Revolution. 

Earle, Stage Coach and Tavern Days. 

Jenks, When America Won Liberty. 

American Statesman Series (including biographies of Washington, 
Hamilton, Jefferson, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Henry, Madison, 
etc.). 



III. ARTISTIC OR CREATIVE PERIOD 

i8oo-igoo 

Introductory Statement 

Glancing back over the whole course of our literature 
up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, we observe 
that the earliest American writings were produced by the 
Southern Colonies with Virginia as the center and Captain 
John Smith and Colonel William Byrd as the chief repre- 
sentatives of what we may term the Cavalier chroniclers; 
that the primacy of literary production of the theological 
type belongs to the New England Colonies with Boston and 
its environs as the chief center and the Reverend Cotton 
Mather and the Reverend Jonathan Edwards as the chief 
literary exponents of the Calvinistic theology of our Puritan 
forefathers; that during the later struggle between the 
French and the English colonies and between the English 
colonies and the mother country, the Middle Colonies with 
Philadelphia as the chief city came to the front as the prin- 
cipal center of the controversial literature of the period, with 
orators and pamphleteers and publicists, such as Otis and 
Henry, Thomas Paine and John Dickerson, Alexander 
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington 
as typical figures, and with the beginnings of a more personal 
and permanent type of literature in the Autobiography of 
Franklin, the nature poetry of Philip Freneau, and the 
novels of Charles Brockden Brown. During the first 
quarter of the nineteenth century we must note the shift 
of the center of commercial and literary activities to the 
growing metropolis of New York City, where Washington 
Irving and his associates founded what has later become 
known as the Knickerbocker School. 

In a brief survey of the artistic and creative literature of 
the nineteenth century in America, we shall find that several 
distinct schools or movements are to be recorded, but these 
schools or movements have revolved pretty definitely around 
the Middle Atlantic States including New York City, 
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, with New York City as 
the center; New England with Boston and its environs as 
the center; the more distinctly local or regional literary 

[70] 



'* Artistic or Creative Period" 71 

expression in the South, as illustrated in the distinct school 
at Charleston, South Carolina; and the central and far West 
coming to the front in the last quarter of the century as the 
section is which the most uniformly democratic and purely 
national literary expression has taken rise. Hence we may 
readily -and conveniently group our chief authors under 
four general sectional divisions, and at the same time pre- 
serve the general integrity of the various schools and distinct 
movements and also the general chronological order — 
namely: (I) The New York and Middle Atlantic States 
Group; (II) The New England Group; (III) The Southern 
Group; and (IV) The Central and Far Western Group. 
The main purpose of the following discussions will be to give 
a rapid survey of the writers of these groups, with some 
analysis of the distinct movements and general influences 
and tendencies in each. We shall merely mention the 
major writers in their proper relations, leaving a fuller 
discussion of their lives and literary attainments to be taken 
up in connection with the selections from their works in 
Part II of the book; and we shall attempt to characterize 
very briefly only the most important of the minor writers. 

The New York and Middle Atlantic 
States Groups 

The Major Writers. Washington Irving,^ the genial 
essayist, story-teller, biographer, and historian, is the leader 
of the New York or Knickerbocker School. With him 
are grouped the three other major writers: James Fenimore 
Cooper,^ the romancer, who was born in New Jersey but 
lived from his infancy in New York and was intimately 
associated with the history and life of his adopted state; 
and the two poets, William Cullen Bryant, ^ who was 
born in Western Massachusetts but was for more than half 
a century the most prominent figure in the journalistic, 
literary, and cultural life of New York City, and later in 
the century Walt Whitman,^ who was born on Long Island 
and lived almost entirely in the Middle Atlantic States, for 
the most part in the neighborhood of New York, calling it 
"Mannahatta, my city." With these four major writers 
we may associate a large company of minor writers whose 

1 See the biographical sections on these writers in Part II of the present 
volume, pp. 38, 56, 70 respectively. 



72 History of American Literature 

work, especially when compared with much of our earlier 
literature, is highly meritorious. It will be convenient to 
group these minor writers under the headings of The Poets, 
The Essayists and General Prose Writers, and Novelists and 
Prose Writers. 

THE POETS 

The Knickerbocker and later poets. Besides Bryant, the 
one well-known New York poet who does not belong to the 
Knickerbocker School, the better known poets of this group 
of New York writers are the two friends Fitz-Greene Halleck 
and Joseph Rodman Drake, and Nathaniel Parker Willis. 
Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Walt 
Whitman may not properly be classed as members of this 
school, though their names are needed to complete the list 
of the more important poets of the Middle Atlantic States 
Group. Richard Hovey may be singled out as a representa- 
tive of the younger poets who made New York their residence 
during the last years of the century. 

Halleck and Drake: "The Croakers." Fitz-Greene Hal- 
leck (i 790-1867) was born in Connecticut, but came to 
New York in his twenty-second year to engage in business. 
He had secured a fairly good education in his youth and had 
taught school in New England a year or two before he 
removed to New York. He was intensely interested in the 
new poetry of the early nineteenth century as it appeared 
under the democratic and romatic impulses which swept 
over England. Thomas Campbell and Lord Byron were 
his especial favorites at the time he met Joseph Rodman 
Drake (1795-182 o), a young New York physician. The 
two have become inseparably associated in literature because 
they wrote together some playful satires in a series of light 
verses which they published for three months in 18 19, 
mainly in the New York Evening Post, under the signature 
of "The Croakers," or "Croker and Company." 

Drake's ''The Culprit Fay.'' Drake was attacked by 
consumption and died at the early age of twenty-five. He 
left in manuscript a romantic poem called "The Culprit 
Fay," an excellent piece of work dashed off in the brief 
space of three days during the siunmer of 1816, but not 
published until several years after his death. It is the 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 73 

story of a fairy knight who fell in love with a mortal 
maiden and was doomed to suffer various penalties because 
of this breaking of fairy law. The poem is a remarkable 
production for so young a man, for Drake was only twenty- 
one when he wrote it. Because of its lack of that careful 
organization and that progressive evolution which art 
demands of long imaginative poems of its kind, "The Cul- 
prit Fay" is not of any great permanent value. It is full of 
pleasing fanciful descriptions, however, and it has a decidedly 
attractive lilt in its rhythm. Also in its aim to people the 
American woods and streams with a company of fairies and 
to create a native supernatural background, the poem is 
distinctly noteworthy. The influence of English fairy lore, 
such as is found in vShakespeare's and Herrick's descriptions 
of Queen Mab and her court, and in Coleridge's "Christabel," 
is easily discernible ; but even with these evidences of foreign 
influence Drake shows considerable originality and great 
promise in this fanciful field of fairy land. 

"The American Flag." One other poem by Drake is still 
frequently read — namely, his intensely patriotic lyric, 
"The American Flag." This song, though unfortunately 
not set to a popular tune, should be classed with Timothy 
Dwight's "Columbia," Francis Hopkinson's "Hail Colum- 
bia," and Francis Scott Key's "The Star-Spangled Banner," 
as one of the choicest of our patriotic lyrics. The note- 
worthy fact about it is that it was not written in any period of 
war excitment, being first published as one of the "Croaker" 
papers in 18 19, and hence it is universal in its appeal to 
Americans and is appropriate to any period of our history. 
The Ivric is given here in full. 



THE AMERICAN FLAG 

I 
When Freedom from her mountain height 

Unfurled her standard to the air, 
She tore the azure robe of night, 

And set the stars of glory there. 
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes 
The milky baldric of the skies, 
And striped its pure celestial white, 
With streakings of the morning light; 



74 History of American Literature 

Then from his mansion in the sun 
She called her eagle bearer down, 
And gave into his mighty hands, 
The symbol of her chosen land. 

II 

Majestic monarch of the cloud. 

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, 
To hear the tempest trumpings loud 
And see the lightning lances driven, 

When strive the warriors of the storm, 
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven. 
Child of the sun ! to thee 'tis given 

To guard the banner of the free, 
To hover in the sulphur smoke, 
And bid its blendings shine afar. 
Like rainbows of the cloud of war. 

The harbingers of victory! 

Ill 

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly. 
The sign of hope and triumph high. 
When speaks the signal trumpet tone. 
And the long line comes gleaming on. 
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet, 
* Has dimm'd the glistening bayonet. 

Each soldier eye shall brightly turn 
To where thy sky-born glories burn. 
And as his springing steps advance. 
Catch war and vengeance from the glance. 
And when the cannon-mouthings loud 
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud. 
And gory sabres rise and fall 
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; 
Then shall thy meteor glances glow, 

And cowering foes shall shrink beneath 
Each gallant arm that strikes below 

That lovely messenger of death. 

IV 

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave 
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 75 

When death, careering oij the gale, 
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, 
And frighted waves rush wildly back 
Before the broadside's reeling rack, 
Each dying wanderer of the sea 
Shall look at once to heaven and thee, 
And smile to see thy splendours fly 
In triumph o'er his closing eye. 

V 

Flag of the free heart's hope and home! 

By angel hands to valour given; 
The stars have lit the welkin dome, 

And all thy hues were born in heaven. 
Forever float that standard sheet! 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us? 
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, 

And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us? 

Halleck's Popular Poems. Though Drake seemed to 
give more promise of developing into a first-rate poet, 
Halleck lived longer and reached a wider popular audience. 
His best known lyric is the lament he wrote upon the death 
of his dear friend Drake, the first stanza of which remains 
familiar through popular quotation: 

Green be the turf above thee. 

Friend of my better days; 
None knew thee but to love thee. 

None named thee but to praise. 

One other piece by Halleck, well known because it was 
formerly extremely popular as a declamation, is his "Marco 
Bozzaris," a patriotic narrative poem dealing with the 
Greek struggle to throw off the hated sovereignty of Turkey. 
It will be remembered that Byron — who, by the way, 
exerted a strong influence on Halleck, as is evidenced both 
by the quality of "Marco Bozzaris" and by Halleck's long 
poem "Fanny," a satire on New York society written in 
imitation of Byron's "Don Juan" — lost his life in his efforts 
to aid the Greek patriots. "Marco Bozzaris" opens with 
the lines ; 



76 History of American Literature 

At midnight, in his guarded tent, 

The Turk was dreaming of the hour 
When Greece, her knee in supphance bent, 

Should tremble at his power; 

contains in its climax the fiery lines, 

"Strike — till the last armed foe expires! 
Strike — for your altars and j'our fires! 
Strike — for the green graves of your sires, 
God, and your native land!" 

and concludes, after the death of the hero, with the often 
quoted passage, 

For thou art Freedom's now and Fame's, 
One of the few, the immortal names 
That were not born to die. 

N. P. Willis. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867) 
belongs to that group of authors who enjoy wide popularity 
in their lifetime only to be speedily neglected or forgotten 
by posterity. He was born in Portland, Maine, was edu- 
cated at Yale, and started his journalistic career in Boston; 
but he early came to New York to become one of the editors 
of the New York Mirror; and upon this periodical and other 
New York literary journals he built up his wide influence 
and reputation as a poet, critic, and writer of tales, sketches, 
and travel pictures. He also wrote one novel, two dramas, 
and several ambitious longer poems. His early poems were 
mostly on Bible subjects, as represented by "David's Lament 
for Absolom," "Hagar in the Wilderness," and "Jephtha's 
Daughter," and it was upon these that his popularity was 
principally built. But posterity has almost entirely neg- 
lected all 4:hat he wrote except one chance lyric called 
"Unseen Spirits," which Poe called the best of Willis' 
productions. Willis possessed a charming personality and 
was a genial patron of literature. He deserves to be remem- 
bered for the encouragement he offered to young American 
writers and for the impetus he gave to the appreciation of 
good literature among all classes. 

Bayard Taylor: his poetry. Another poet of the middle 
states to be remembered as one who rose almost to the 
first rank of creative writers and certainly to the first rank 



"Artistic or Creative Period'' 77 

of poetical translators is Bayard Taylor (1825-1878). He 
was born in Pennsylvania, and began at an early age to 
compose verse, a volume of which he published before he 
was twenty. Being possessed of a strong desire to go abroad, 
he undertook, at the age of nineteen, practically without 
money, to travel on foot throughout Europe. His news- 
paper travel letters were so well received that he published 
a volume of them in 1846 under the title of Views Afoot. 
This book gave him a considerable reputation as a pleasing 
prose stylist, and he was in consequence employed as a 
member of the staff of the New York Tribune. He later 
traveled practically all over the eastern world, writing long 
descriptive letters, many of which he afterwards collected 
into books. The best of his original poetry perhaps is that 
inspired by the Orient; most of this he gathered together 
in the volume called Poems of the Orient (1854). The 
"Bedouin Song" is worthy of complete quotation as an 
example of Bayard Taylor's lyric gift at its best. 

BEDOUIN SONG 

From the Desert I come to thee 

On a stallion shod with fire; 
And the winds are left behind 

In the speed of my desire. 
Under thy window I stand. 

And the midnight hears my cry : 
I love thee! I love but thee, 

With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old 

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold! 

Look from thy window and see 

My passion and my pain; 
I lie on the sands below, 

And I faint in thy disdain. 
Let the night-winds touch thy brow 

With the heat of my burning sigh, 
And melt thee to hear the vow 

Of a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold I 



7 8 History of American Literature 

My steps are nightly driven, 

By the fever in my breast, 
To hear from thy lattice breathed 

The word that shall give me rest. 
Open the door of thy heart, 

And open thy chamber door. 
And my kisses shall teach thy lips 

The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold! 

His Translation of Faust. Taylor was a most industrious 
writer of books, publishing some thirty-five or more volumes 
of varied character during his active career as poet, journal- 
ist, and professional traveler; but he wrote too much and too 
fast to meet the severe demands of permanent literature. 
Perhaps his most signal service to English literature is his 
successful metrical translation of the great German master- 
piece of the nineteenth century, — namely, Goethe's Faust. 
He had been strongly attracted to German literature even 
from his early youth, and after his travels in Germany, his 
extensive study of German literature at first hand, and his 
inarriage to Marie Hansen, the daughter of a German 
astronomer, he undertook with a high sense of the serious- 
ness and importance of his task, to translate into English 
the greatest of all German poems. It is generally recog- 
nized that Taylor's is the best metrical rendering of Faust 
into English that has yet been made. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman. It is difficult to say 
whether Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) deserves 
higher praise as a critic of poetry or as a poet. He had a 
rather odd career for a literary man of any type. He was 
dismissed from Yale because of some wild pranks. He then 
wandered about, becoming in succession the editor of several 
country newspapers. He travelled around selling clocks, 
and then became a real estate broker in New York, attracting 
attention by his lively poetical contributions to the New 
York Tribune. He acted as a reporter for several New 
York dailies, went to the front as a war correspondent during 
the Civil War, obtained a government clerkship in the 
department of the Attorney-General at Washington, and 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 79 

finally gave up this position to return to New York to begin 
his career as a stock broker on Wall Street. He later 
secured a seat on the New York Exchange and held it until 
I goo, at which time he retired from business to devote his 
last years entirely to literature. He had never during all 
these years of active business life given up his study of 
literature nor the production of original poetry. He was 
a persistent reader of American and Victorian poetry, and 
his services to literature in his generous appreciation of 
many younger authors, in his own creative work, and in his 
efforts in behalf of the cause of international copyright should 
give him the right to honorable mention in any history of 
our literature. 

Stedman as a poet. Stedman began writing verse while 
he was in college, winning a prize at Yale with his poem 
"Westminster Abbey." He wrote many poems on the 
stirring events of his time, notably his patriotic lyrics on 
John Brown and on Abraham Lincoln. He boldly included 
some fifteen of his poems in his American Anthology, and his 
collected volume of poems equals in bulk the work of most 
of the other American poets. Still there are none of his 
poems that may be classed among the permanent master- 
pieces of our literature. His "Pan in Wall Street" shows 
how the appeal of pastoral music came to him in the midst 
of his business career, but it also indicates perhaps that 
poetry is a jealous and severe mistress, and that no one who 
allows any large part of his energy to be absorbed in business 
can hope to rise to a position of great eminence in the arts. 

Stedman as a critic. Doubtless Stedman will be longer 
remembered as a critic than as a poet. Among his anthol- 
ogies and critical productions should be mentioned first of 
all A Library of American Literature (1888), a standard 
reference work in eleven volumes edited by Stedman in 
colloboration with Miss Ellen M. Hutchinson; and next 
to this ambitious anthology shquld be mentioned A Victorian 
Anthology (1895) and An American Anthology (1901), both 
standard books in their fields; and Victorian Poets (1875) 
and his Poets of America (1885), two volumes of criticism; 
and The Nature and Elements of Poetry (1892), a series of 
lectures first delivered at Johns Hopkins University, contain- 
ing a great deal of informing and suggestive criticism for 
the student of poetry. Practically all general libraries 



8o History of American Literature 

which make any pretension to completeness possess some or 
all of these books. 

Richard Hovey. Though born in Illinois, Richard Hovey 
( 1 864-1 goo) belongs by training and residence to the East, 
and since the better part of his work was done after he 
became a teacher of English literature at Barnard- College 
and Columbia University, we may place him in the New 
York group. He prepared himself for the ministry, but 
turned to newspaper work and the stage, and finally to 
teaching. He was the most aspiring of all our younger 
poets, though his achievement was cut short by an early 
death. He attempted to rival the greatest poets in his 
subjects and in his treatment. He wrote Greek odes. 
Arcadian lyrics, stirring patriotic hymns, and many occa- 
sional poems; he aspired to add a new canto to Byron's 
"Don Juan"; he entered Tennyson's field of Arthurian leg- 
ends and planned a series of nine dramatic poems, which, 
had he lived to complete them, though they are cast in a 
different form from Tennyson's Idylls of the King, might 
have challenged comparison with the greater poet's work. 
Besides three volumes of Songs from Vagabondia (1894- 
1896-1900), written in collaboration with his friend Bliss 
Carman, the Canadian poet. Along the Trail: a Book of 
Lyrics (1898), and To the End of the Trail (1908), Hovey 
completed four of the nine dramas planned to be included 
under the general title Lattncelot and Giienevere; a Poem in 
Dramas. These were "The Quest of Merlin, a Masque"; 
"The Marriage of Guenevere, a Tragedy," "The Birth 
of Galahad, a Romantic Drama"; and "Taleisin, a Masque." 
A considerable part of the fifth piece, which was to be called 
"The Graal, a Tragedy," was left in fragmentary form 
along with outline sketches and fragments for the four 
remaining dramas. This sequence, even in its incomplete 
form, is undoubtedly the most notable piece of work yet 
done by an American in the field of Arthurian romance. 
As has been said, Hovey certainly deserves to be placed 
among "the inheritors of unfiUed renown." His war poems, 
written during the Spanish-American War, are particularly 
appropriate reading now since America has become involved 
in the great European War. The following passage from 
"The Call of the Bugles" will give an idea of Hovey 's enthu- 
siastic patriotism, and at the same time show how well parts 
of this poem fit the conditions of the present. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 8i 

Not against war, 

But against wrong 

League we in mighty bonds from sea to sea! 

Peace, when the world is free! 

Peace, when there is no thong, 

Fetter nor bar ! 

No scourges for men's backs, 

No thumbscrews and no racks — 

For body or soul! 

No unjust law! 

No Tyrannous control 

Of brawn or maw! 

But, though the day be far, 

Till then, war! 

Blow, bugles! 

Over the rumbling drum and marching feet 

Sound your high, sweet defiance to the air! 

Great is war — great and fair! 

The terrors of his face are grand and sweet. 

And to the wise, the calm of God is there. 

God clothes himself in darkness as in light, 

—The God of love, but still the God of might. 

Nor love they least 

Who strike with right good will 

To vanquish ill 

And fight God's battle upward from the beast. 

There is perhaps a touch of "jingoism" in Hove^^'s war 
poetry, but it must be remembered that he was still a young 
man when he died. If he had lived he would doubtless 
have moved on into a higher type of philosophic and unselfish 
patriotism. 

Minor poets. Space forbids the further discussion of the 
remaining New York and Middle States Poets, though there 
are many names that should be included here both for the 
excellency of their technique and in some cases, particularly 
among the more modern poets, for the freshness and mod- 
ernity of their lyric notes. Among the best of the minor 
poets of the central section may be named the following: 
Thomas Buchanan Read (1822-1872), author of "Sheri- 
dan's Ride," "The Closing Scene," and many other longer 
and shorter poems; Hans Breitman, whose real name was 



82 History oj American Literature 

Charles Godfre}^ Leland (1824-1903), writer of humorous 
ballads in a sort of broken German-English, or Pennsylvania 
Dutch, dialect; Richard Henry Stoddard (1825- 1903), a 
prolific but unequal writer of narrative and lyric verse; 
Alice (1820-187 1) and Phoebe Gary (1824-1871), authors 
of many child lyrics and religious songs, "One Sweetly 
Solemn Thought" being the best known of the younger 
sister's hymns; Richard Watson Gilder (i 844-1 909), for 
many years editor of the Century Magazine and author of 
numerous poems of a deeply religious or spiritual character; 
George H. Boker (1823-1890), writer of good lyrics and also 
the author of what has been pronounced the finest acting 
tragedy produced in America, Francesca da Rimini; Emma 
Lazarus (1849-1887), the widely admired young Jewish 
poetess; the Reverend Henry van Dyke (185 2-), writer 
of excellent idyllic prose and polished verse ; Clinton ScoUard 
(i860-), and Frank Dempster Sherman (i860-), both 
excellent technicians in their lyric verse; Josephine Preston 
Peabody (1874-), author of delightful child verses and 
of a prize drama. The Piper; Percy Mackaye (187 5-), 
descended from a family of famous actors in New York 
City, author of The Scarecrow and a dozen or more other 
successful stage plays, a number of masques and one-act 
plays, and also some patriotic odes and other literary 
lyrics of merit; and Witter Bynner (1881-), author of "An 
Ode to Harvard," "The New World," and "Iphegenia in 
Tauris." 

The song writers. New York and the middle states 
have furnished a number of our most successful popular 
song writers. Samuel Woodworth (i 785-1842) was born 
in Massachusetts, but he spent a large part of his life in 
New York as an editor. He is remembered for the senti- 
mental ballad "The Old Oaken Bucket." John Howard 
Payne (1791-1852) was born in New York, but he lived a 
sort of nomadic life as an actor, dramatist, dramatic critic, 
and foreign consul, sojourning in many cities in many differ- 
ent lands. He is now remembered almost solely for the 
sincere and pathetic song "Home, Sweet Home," which 
was inserted as a lyric in Clari, or The Maid oJ Milan, a 
sentimental light opera otherwise of little literary worth. 
Payne's best drama is his blank-verse tragedy called Brutus, 
or. The Fall of Tarquin. George Pope Morris (i 802-1 864), 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 83 

and Dr. Thomas Dunn English (1819-1902), both of Phila- 
delphia, are remembered respectively for a single successful 
song lyric of a simple and reminiscent or sentimental type, 
Morris being the author of "Woodman, Spare that Tree," 
and Dr. English the author of the well known song "Ben 
Bolt." Pennsylvania' may also lay claim to Stephen C. 
Foster (1826-1864), since he was born in Pittsburgh, though 
he lived most of his life in Cincinnati and is frequently 
thought of as a Middle Westerner. Foster had a fine sense 
for simple heart melodies, and several of his songs have 
become fixed in the American popular ear more perma- 
nently than any other native song except perhaps "Home, 
Sweet Home." The best known of his songs are "Old 
Black Joe," "My Old Kentucky Home," and "Old Folks 
at Home." 

ESSAYISTS AND GENERAL PROSE WRITERS 

The more important prose writers. The most important 
of the New York and Middle Atlantic States prose writers 
may be grouped in two classes, — namely, the essayists and 
general prose stylists, and the story writers and novelists. 
Nathaniel Parker Willis, Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence 
Stedman, and Henry van Dyke, all of whom wrote good 
prose, have already been named among the poets. While 
dozens of additional names might be mentioned, the three 
writers of general prose that deserve special attention in 
the Middle States group are George William Curtis, Charles 
Dudley Warner, and John Burroughs. 

George William Curtis. George William Curtis (1824- 
1892) was born in Rhode Island, but when he was fifteen he 
was carried to New York by his family and set to work as 
a clerk in a business establishment. Later he came under 
the influence of the transcendental movement^ which swept 
over New England, and for a time he lived at Brook Farm 
as one of the students or boarders. Then he took up his 
residence at Concord, in order to be near Emerson and some 
of the other noted transcendentalists there. After some 
years of travel abroad, during which period he wrote some 
good travel sketches, Curtis finally settled down to editorial 
work in New York City, being engaged principally on the 

iSee p. 92. 



84 History of American Literature 

publications issued by Harper and Brothers. His best 
prose work is contained in the idylHc Prue and I; in the 
Potiphar Papers; in the essays collected from the Editor's 
Easy Chair, a department which he conducted for a number 
of years for Harper's Magazine; and in his popular Orations 
and Addresses. He carried his idealistic philosophy into 
politics and business in such a way as to set a very high 
standard for his contemporaries and at the same time to 
give a more than temporary value to his writings. He wrote 
one novel called Trumps, but the delicate and idyllic Prue 
and I, in which the imaginative element of fiction and the 
intimate personal tone of the familiar essay are mingled, 
stands out above all Curtis 's other productions, and may 
be classed as one of the distinctive American prose master- 
pieces of the mid-nineteenth century. 

Charles Dudley Warner. Charles Dudley Warner (1829- 
1900) was born and reared in Massachusetts, but he was 
educated at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York, and in 
law at the University of Pennsylvania; and after practicing 
his profession for a year in Chicago, he settled permanently 
in New York to engage in editorial and literary work. His 
principal prose works are My Summer in a Garden, a collec- 
tion of pleasing light essays and sketches; Backlog Studies, 
treating largely of outdoor material; several novels, among 
them The Gilded Age, written in collaboration with Mark 
Twain; and Being a Boy, a delightfully reminiscent book 
of his own boyhood. Warner's chief claim to literary 
distinction is in his genial humor, kindly sentimentality, 
and the perfect sincerity and naturalness of style. Many 
a young reader has learned to appreciate the art of restrained 
and yet effective prose through such sketches as "How I 
Killed a Bear" and "Camping Out." Warner is also often 
referred to as the editor of The Library of the World's Best 
Literature. 

John Burroughs. Among the recent writers of essays 
dealing with natural history and outdoor life in a sympathetic 
and more or less scientific spirit, the most prominent is John 
Burroughs (183 7-). He was bom in Roxbury, New York", 
and except for a few years devoted to business and travel, 
he has spent his entire life in his rural retreats near New 
York City, studying outdoor life at first hand. He has 
published a number of excellent books on nature and also 




Courtesy of King-Brown Company 
JOHN BURROUGHS AND JOHN MUIR 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 85 

some discriminating critical essays. Among the dozen or 
more volumes on nature which Burroughs has produced, 
perhaps the best are Wake Robin, Winter Sunshine, Birds 
and Poets, and Locusts and Wild Honey. Though not so 
well known as a writer of literary criticism, Burroughs is in 
reality one of our best critics. A recent writer has said that 
Burroughs's essays on literary subjects "may be classed 
with the sanest and most illuminating critical work in 
American literature."^ His essays have been collected in a 
volume called Indoor Studies. Burroughs was one of the 
earliest and most enthusiastic friends and champions of 
Walt Whitman, and his Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and 
Person and Walt Whitman, a Study are important contribu- 
tions to the large amount of Whitman criticism which has 
appeared in England and America in recent years. 

Other essayists. To this earlier group of general essayists 
may be added the names of several writers who have gained 
distinction by a steady adherence to the more distinctly 
literary type of essays. These are Miss Agnes Repplier 
(1858-), of Philadelphia, who has published more than a 
dozen volumes; and Paul Elmer More (1864-), whose 
Shelhurne Essays are designated by discerning critics as the 
most discriminating American critical work of recent years. 
Mr. More was born in St. Louis and partly educated there, 
but his best work has been done under the influence of New 
England and New York environments. 



NOVELISTS AND STORY WRITERS 

The more important writers of fiction. A long chapter 
might be devoted to the New York and Middle States 
writers of fiction, but we shall have, to limit our brief com- 
ment to a very few among the most notable. In Part II 
of this volume will be found a fuller treatment of Irving 
and Cooper, the two major writers of fiction- in the early 
New York school. To these we may add from the recent 
school the names of F. Marion Crawford, who is perhaps 
the most popular of the later New York writers both in the 
amount and in the literary value of his fiction; and Stephen 
Crane, who if not in attainment at least in promise should 
be given a high rank among our later writers of fiction. 



^I. L. Pattee, A History of American Literature since 1870, p. 153. 



86 History of American Literature 

O. Henry (Sydney Porter), one of the most widely read of the 
twentieth-century writers, is connected, in his later years 
at least, with the New York group; but since he began his 
career in the South, he is treated elsewhere in this volume 
as one of the major writers of the South. To Philadelphia 
we may assign S. Weir Mitchell and Frank R. Stockton as 
the most important of the later writers of fiction in that 
center, and since they antedate Crawford and Crane, we 
may take them up first. 

S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-19 14), 
though born in Virginia, was educated at the University 
of Pennsylvania and at the Jefferson Medical College in 
Philadelphia, and practically his whole life was spent in the 
city of his adoption. He began writing stories just after 
the Civil War, but it was not until he published Hugh 
Wynne, Free Quaker in 1897 that he attained a national 
popularity. The scene of this story was laid in Philadelphia 
during the "days that tried men's souls," and it is now 
generally recognized as one of the very best of American 
historical novels. Other novels by Dr. Mitchell worthy of 
special mention are The Adventure of Frangois (1898), Dr. 
North and his Friends (1900), Circumstance (1901), and 
The Red City (1907). 

Frank R. Stockton. Frank Richard Stockton (183 4-1 902) 
was born and educated in Philadelphia and is usually 
associated with that city, though much of his literary work 
was done in connection with editorial positions which he 
held in New York City. The story that brought him fame, 
"The Lady, or the Tiger?" was first published in Scribner's 
Magazine in 1882, and has since been reprinted many times 
as the standard of the type of short story distinguished 
by peculiarity of situation and doubtful outcome. Stock- 
ton was possessed of a whimsical or quizzical turn of mind, 
and he seemed to take delight in creating odd and striking 
situations and in making humorous and tantalizing con- 
clusions. He is always interesting and entertaining, but 
there is no great constructive power and no profound and 
searching character analysis in his works. Rudder Grange 
(1879) is perhaps his best longer story. His fame will doubt- 
less rest upon his ingenious short stories depicting ludicrous 
and yet more or less convincing situations, such as may be 



"Artistic or Creative Period'' 87 

found in "The Lady, or the Tiger?" "Negative Gravity," 
"The Transferred Ghost," and "The Late Mrs. Null." 

F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion Crawford (1S54- 
1909), though descended from a distinguished American 
family, was bom in Italy and really spent most of his life 
abroad. He was educated partly in New England and 
partly in English and German universities ; and he began his 
literary career at Harvard University. However, he was 
associated with New York life more intimately in his later 
literary career than with any other part of America, writing 
several novels depicting society life in the American metro- 
polis and himself living mostly in New York whenever he 
visited this country. Hence, though he is quite as much a 
cosmopolitan as an American writer, we may place Crawford 
among the New York school. He wrote an enormous 
number of entertaining volumes of fiction, publishing forty- 
five novels in all, and as many as five in one year during 
his active literary career of twenty-seven years. His first 
book was Mr. Isaacs (1882), a story dealing with^ life in 
India, but it is generally conceded that his best stories are 
those which deal with Italian life and scene. The four 
novels with Italian coloring, Saracinesca (1887), Sant' 
Ilario (1889), Don Orsino (1892), and Corleone: A Sicilian 
Story (1897), a continuous sequence, rank among the most 
delightfully entertaining novels written during the late 
nineteenth century. Many other of Crawford's novels are 
equally popular, however, such stories as Dr. Claudius 
(1883), A Roman Singer (1884), Greifenstein (1889), and 
A Cigarette -Maker's Romance (1890), having one after the 
other attracted and held thousands of readers. Crawford 
was a true cosmopolite. He knew the life of many lands; 
he has portrayed scenes and characters in Italy, Germany, 
England, Turkey, India, ancient Persia and Arabia, and 
America, all with convincing and entertaining skill. The 
Three Fates (1892) is perhaps the best of his stories dealing 
with New York society life, though Katharine Lauderdale 
(1894) and its sequel. The Ralstons (1894), also give extensive 
portraits of this same society. So wide is his range, so ver- 
satile his story-telling gift, and so adept his literary skill 
that he will inevitably be remembered as one of our most 
popular novelists. He had no purpose but to entertain 
his readers, no aim but to tell a good story; and to those who 



88 History of American Literature 

easily lend themselves to the seduction of romance, he will 
doubtless continue to be for many years a source of delight. 

Stephen Crane. Stephen Crane (1870-1900), the youngest 
of the late nineteenth century New York group of novelists, 
was born in New Jersey and educated at Lafayette College 
and Syracuse University, entered journalism as a war 
correspondent of the New York Journal during the Spanish 
American War, and rose rapidly to distinction in his pro- 
fession. He wrote stories dealing with slum life in New 
York {Bowery Tales), and with child life {Whilomville 
Stories), and with New York society {The Third Violet), 
but his one notable production is Tlie Red Badge of Courage 
(1895), a remarkable story centered around the battle of 
Chancellorsville in the Civil War. It is really astonishing 
how thirty years after the war a young man of twenty-five 
could conjure up such realistic battle scenes as are con- 
tained in this book. 

Minor fiction writers. Among the great number of 
novelists and short-story writers of the Middle Atlantic 
States group we may name the following with a typical 
work or works by each; Edward Payson Roe (183 8-1 888), 
Barriers Burned Away (1872), The Opening oj a Chestnut 
Burr (1874); Edward Noyes Westcott (1847-1898), David 
Harum (189S); Henry van Dyke (1852), Little Rivers (1895), 
and Fisherman's Luck (1899), two outdoor studies, and 
numerous short stories, among them "The Blue Flower" 
and "The Story of the Other Wise Man," this last being 
perhaps the most beautiful Christmas story written in 
America; Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855-1896), Short Sixes 
(1891); Harold Frederic (1856-1898), The Copperhead, and 
Other Stories of the North (1893), ^^"^ ^^^ Damnation of 
Theron Ware (1896); Kate Douglas Wiggin (1857-), The 
Story of Patsy (1889), Timothy's Quest (1890), Penelope s 
Progress (1898), The Bird's Christmas Carol (1888), Rebecca 
(1903), and New Chronicles of Rebecca (1907) ; Irving Bacheller 
(1859-), Eben Holden (1900), Dri and I (1900); Owen Wister 
(i860-), The Virginian (1900); Edith Wharton (1862-), The 
House of Mirth (1905), The Fruit of the Tree (1907); Richard 
Harding Davis ( 1 864-19 1 6) , Gallagher and Other Stories ( 1 89 1 ) , 
Van Bibber and Others (1892); Paul Leicester Ford (1865- 
1902), The Honorable Peter Stirling (1894), Janice Meredith, 
A Story of the American Revolution (1894). 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 89 

The New England Group 

The major writers: Boston the center. The New Eng- 
land group of mid-nineteenth century writers easily takes 
the place of first importance among all the groups or schools 
of writers in the history of our literature. It is perhaps 
true that Irving and Cooper and Walt Whitman of the New 
York group, Poe of the Southern group, and Mark Twain of 
the Western group may have attracted more attention 
abroad than any one of the New England writers during 
the nineteenth century; but when we estimate American 
literature as a whole, we are inevitably led to the conclusion 
that the productions of Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, Lowell andTnoREAU,^ to say nothing of 
the work of a large number of minor authors to be classed 
with them, make up the great body of our permanent nine- 
teenth century literature. Early in the second quarter of the 
century the literary center shifted from New York to Massa- 
chusetts, and for fifty or more years the New England 
school dominated the intellectual and cultural life of America. 
Boston with its environs was the center of our intellectual 
and literary life during these years; Cambridge, a suburb 
of Boston, was the site of Harvard, the oldest and most 
influential of American Universities; and here lived Long- 
fellow, Lowell, and Holmes, and many others of distinction. 
And Concord, the historic village less than twenty miles 
away, was the home at one time or another of Emerson, 
Hawthorne, Thoreau, the Channings, the Alcotts, and 
others of minor literary fame. 

Two important movements: The New England Renais- 
sance. Two well-defined and far-reaching intellectual move- 
ments took rise in New England during the second and third 
quarters of the century: first, the revolt against the Cal- 
vinistic theology of the Puritans, a movement which resulted 
in two philosophic or thought phases known as Unitarianism 
and Transcendentalism; and second, the anti-slavery or 
abolition movement in politics, a movement which eventu- 
ally divided the nation into two intensely antagonistic fac- 
tions and led more or less directly to the Civil War. The 
whole intellectual movement in New England has been 

iSee biographical sections on these writers in Part II of this volume, pp. 
loi, 143, 184, 266, 301, 344 and 325. 



90 History of American Literature 

happily called "the New England Renaissance."^ Before 
taking up a survey of the writers of this section, we may 
well attempt to explain briefly the nature of the revival 
which came to dominate the thought of New England and 
of the whole nation, in fact, during this period. 

THE RISE OF UNITARIANISM 

The spirit of liberty. We have previously discussed the 
general characteristics of the thought and temper of the 
Puritan settlers of New England." We come now to observe 
how the same spirit that led the Pilgrim Fathers to leave 
England in search of religious freedom animated the later 
New England thinkers in their gradual revolt against the 
narrowness and personal restraint's inspired by the austere 
and repressive attitude toward life which characterized the 
Puritan regime in America. The first form in which this 
revolt expressed itself was within the church. The spirit 
of the Revolution, which, as we have seen, eventually over- 
threw English political sovereignty, manifested itself also 
in the quiet revolution which took place in religious thought 
— namely, the dethronement of Calvinism and the gradual 
acceptance of Unitarianism in its stead. 

Fundamental teachings of Unitarianism. Harvard Col- 
lege was in its early history the intellectual stronghold of 
Calvinistic theology but during the eighteenth century 
Har\'ard gradually became more and more independent of 
this influence, while Yale College in Connecticut became 
the center of religious conservatism and orthodoxy. The 
histor}' of the change at Harvard is significant. In 1805 
Reverend Henry Ware, a Unitarian minister, was elected 
over the protests of the orthodox Calvinistic party to be 
Professor of Divinity at Harvard. The Unitarians hold 
that there is one God and that he made man in his own 
image; but they deny that Christ is the equal of God, accept- 
ing him, however, as the perfect man, or at least the perfect 
representative of what man may become. They profess 
to find in man's own nature certain tendencies toward the 
divine, and hence they declare that there is no need for a 



1 See Professor Barrett Wendell's A Literary History of America. 
2See p. 12. 



''Artistic or Creative Period'' 91 

Redeemer and consequently no need for a Comforter, or 
Holy Spirit, to represent this Redeemer. The doctrine of 
the Trinity is thus gradually dethroned, and the doctrine 
of the one God, which is the fundamental idea of Unita- 
rianism, as is indicated in the name itself, is accepted in its 
stead. 

Channing's leadership. William Ellery Channing (1780- 
1842) was the chief spokesman of the new theology now 
rising into prominence in New England. He became the 
minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston in 1803 and 
remained its pastor for thirty-seven years. In 18 19 he 
preached his famous sermon on Unitarian Christianity, in 
which he declared for intellectual freedom in religious mat- 
ters, and particularly in the interpretation of the Scriptures, 
basing his argument on the text, "Prove all things; hold fast 
that which is good." He held that the Scriptures must be 
interpreted by man in the light of reason rather than blindly 
accepted as a matter of faith or mere traditional doctrine. 
He laid the foundation of virtue in the moral nature of man 
and held up the conscience as the supreme guide of conduct. 
This spirit of liberalism in religious matters was in effect 
a reaction against the restraints set up by the strict Cal- 
vinistic tenets of the Puritans. One of the final reforms 
instituted in the new form of worship was the abandonment 
of the use of the sacrament of the Lord's supper. It will be 
remembered that Emerson, who was the minister of the 
old Second Church at Boston, retired from the pastorate 
because he had come to have conscientious scruples in regard 
to administering the sacrament of the Lord's supper. 

Influence on the New England writers. Although the 
sect was at no period strong numerically, Unitarianism 
became the religious belief of the most distinguished element 
in New England during the first two decades of the nine- 
teenth century, and held sway until well past the middle of 
the century, when its influence began to decline. It exerted 
a powerful force upon the literary products of this period, 
Iiearly all of the great New England writers, except Whittier, 
either having accepted it as their faith or having come 
strongly under its influence. In any interpretation of 
American literature in the nineteenth century, the remark- 
able change from the early strict Puritanism or Calvinistic 
theology to the liberalism of the Unitarian movement cannot 



92 History of American Literature 

be ignored. Unitarianism was more or less intimately con- 
nected with Transcendentalism, and also with the rise of 
the doctrine of the abolition of slavery, and hence it must be 
constantly kept in mind in interpreting these later phases 
of the intellectual awakening in New England. 

THE TRANSCENDENTAL MOVEMENT 

The origin and the meaning of transcendentalism. There 
arose in middle Europe during the latter part of the eight- 
eenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries an idealistic 
type of philosophy which materially affected the literature 
of the time. The literary activity resulting partly from 
this idealistic philosophy and partly from other causes 
became known as the Romantic Movement. Its principal 
exponents in England were De Quincey, Coleridge, and 
Carlyle in prose, and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, 
Shelley, and Keats in poetry. Naturally the new impulse 
found followers in America, and what is known as the 
Transcendental Movement came into prominence, particu- 
larly in the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller 
(Marquise d'Ossoli), and Bronson Alcott. It is difficult 
to define Transcendentalism, but in general it may be said 
to be the recognition of the supremacy of idealism in phi- 
losophy, literature, and conduct of life. It is, in fact, an 
exaltation of the ideal or spiritual over the real or material. 
Transcendentalism insists that certain of our more important 
general concepts arise through intuition and not through 
experience, and that these intuitional concepts transcend 
or take precedence over all concepts acquired through 
experience; that the spirit or soul is infinitely superior to 
material things, in other words that the ideal transcends 
the material. Hence not material things but our ideas of 
material things are the more important; in fact, the only 
real existence is the spiritual or ideal which lies back of every 
material object. The transcendentalists depended, then, 
not solely upon the revelation of God's will toward man as 
found in the Bible, nor upon the result of man's experience; 
but upon certain innate, that is inborn, instincts or concepts 
in man's nature or soul and the interpretation of these by 
the individual conscience. They believed that the soul 
of man was of the same essence as the divine soul, and 
hence that man's own nature was the source of his spiritual 




THE MINUTE MAX, CONCORD 
'By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled. 
Here once the embattled farmers stood, 

And fired the shot heard round the world.' 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 93 

concepts. For example, they held that man realizes the 
difference between right and wrong by intuition or instinc- 
tive revelation in his own nature, rather than by revelation 
through experience or even through God's divine word. 
Emerson expressed the central idea of his philosophy in the 
little book called Nature, in which he drew the distinction 
between nature or the material world and the soul or the 
world of spirit, and in his essay on "Self -Reliance," when 
he bade every man to trust himself and his own intuitions 
confidently and absolutel}'. 

The Dial. A good deal of vagueness naturally attends this 
idealistic philosophy, and it was necessary for the pro- 
ponents of these vague and abstruse doctrines to have some 
medium in which to express their thought and bring it before 
the public for fuller acceptance and discussion. In 1840 
The Dial was established with a remarkable woman, Mar- 
garet Fuller — she later married an Italian nobleman named 
Ossoli — as editor. This quarterly journal continued for 
four years, part of the time under Emerson's direction. It 
is now highly prized as the chief repository of much of the 
contemporary expression of the transcendental notions then 
in vogue. In fact, it was the journal that aided most in 
crystallizing and unifying the vague tendencies of the 
transcendental thinkers. Some of the extremists, such as 
Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott, became so intense and 
mystical and super-subtle in their expression of transcen- 
dental notions as to attract the ridicule of the general pub- 
lic, and thus the saner work of Emerson with his pure white 
light of spirituality in his interpretation of life, and of 
Thoreau with his minute interpretation of nature in her 
var>ang moods was somewhat discounted. 

The Brook Farm experiment. .In addition to The Dial 
another peculiar experiment helped to bring the ideals of 
the transcendentalists into public notice. This was the 
establishment in 1841 of a sort of idealistic community at 
West Roxbury, near Boston, known as Brook Farm. It was 
intended to afford a school for the training of bright young 
minds in the new transcendental philosophy, and at the 
same time to provide a retreat for adults who wished to 
live the ideal communistic life. The members of the com- 
munity were to have equal privileges, and each one was 
expected to do his share of physical labor and also to join 



94 History of American Literature 

in the intellectual and literary activities of the group. 
The phalanstery, or common home for all the members, was 
built later, and a number of men and women and younger 
students took up their residence here for longer or shorter 
periods. It will be remembered that Hawthorne invested 
one thousand dollars of his savings in the project at its 
beginning and spent several months in residence at the farm, 
and later based one of his novels. The Blithedale Romance, 
on his experiences here. The experiment attracted wide- 
spread attention throughout New England and even in 
certain parts of the Old World. Emerson, Margaret Fuller, 
and . many prominent persons made occasional visits of 
several days' length to the community. From a practical 
point of view the experiment proved a failure, for the resident 
members knew too little about practical agriculture to make 
anything from the land, and the income from the school was 
insufficient to pay running expenses. When the main build- 
ing burned in 1847, the community was broken up and the 
experiment abandoned. Little of purely literary value 
resulted directly from the Brook Farm experiment, but the 
influence of this effort to put the idealistic theories of the 
transcendentalists into practical living must be taken into 
account in estimating the literary output of New England 
during this period. 

THE RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF ABOLITION 

Introductory statement. The growth of the demand for 

the abolition of negro slaver}^ in America is intimately 
interwoven with the rise of Unitarian theology and trans- 
cendental philosophy in New England. Abolition became 
finally a political and social question, but in its beginning 
it was an offshoot of the new spirit for emancipation of mind 
and soul as announced in the religious and philosophic 
reforms just mentioned. Since the question finally became 
one of practical politics, its progress is usually more or less 
fully treated in school histories of the United States, and 
hence here we need only glance at its literary aspects. 

Literary products: pamphleteers and orators. Naturally 
a question of public policy like the abolition of slavery 
would call forth two distinct schools of orators and political 
writers, and naturally the North, animated by the influences 
for personal and intellectual liberty emanating from the 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 95 

two religious and intellectual movements just described' 
would stand for the complete emancipation of the negro 
slaves; and naturally, too, the South, where slavery had 
proved to be most successful in the agricultural pursuits 
of that section, would stand for the continuance of the institu- 
tion of slavery. In New England, particularly,. the aid of 
pure literature was also called in, and we have a great mass 
of anti-slavery poems, such as those of Whittier, Lowell, 
and Longfellow among the greater poets; and purpose 
novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
But the bulk of the literature connected with the movement 
for abolition consisted of patriotic orations and argumen- 
tative speeches, essays and polemical tracts, and the like. 
Whittier, Lowell, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, 
and many others contributed to the leading abolition 
journals, such as The Liberator, founded by Garrison in 
Boston in 1831, and The Pennsylvania Freeman, edited for 
a number of years by Whittier. The literary value of this 
controversial writing and this partisan oratory, as we have 
already shown in our discussion of the Revolutionary 
literature, is slight and transitory. We cannot pass over 
this material, however, without mentioning the names of 
such orators as Daniel Webster (i 782-1852), Edward 
Everett (1794-1865), Wendell Phillips (1811-1886), Theo- 
dore Parker (1810-1860), and Charles Sumner (1811-1874). 
The orations of some of these have reached a wider fame 
because of their more general patriotic or literary nature, 
such as Webster's great address at the laying of the corner- 
stone of the Bunker Hill monument, known as "The First 
Bunker Hill Oration," his speech on the American Con- 
stitution, usually called "Webster's Reply to Hayne," 
delivered in the "Great Debate" in Congress in 1S30, and 
Everett's oft-repeated speech on "George Washington." 
Interesting also from the point of view of literary history 
is Everett's speech, "The Progress of Literature in America." 

THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIANS 

The chief historians. The nineteenth century New Eng- 
land historians who have achieved literary as well as scholarly 
success in their several fields are George Ticknor, William 
H. Prescott, John Lothrop Motley, George Bancroft, 
Francis Parkman, and John Fiske. 



96 History of American Literature 

George Ticknor. George Ticknor (1791-1871), born at 
Boston and educated at Dartmouth, was one of the first 
of the American scholars to seek training abroad. He 
studied in Europe for four years, principally at Gottingen, 
Germany. He returned to America in 1815 to become 
Smith professor of modern languages at Harvard, a position 
which he held until 1834, when he was succeeded by Henry 
W. Longfellow. Ticknor deserves rememberance not only 
as a productive historian and critical writer, but also as 
one of our first scholars to adopt advanced European methods 
of research. He did not begin to publish until several 
years after his retirement from active teaching, but the 
long period of preparation and the patient method of his 
composition are justified in the permanent character of 
his works. His History of Spanish Literature (1849) is one 
of the first great landmarks in American scholarly achieve- 
ment. Besides this standard literary history, his Life of 
William Hickling Prescott (1864) and his own Life, Letters, 
and fournals (1876) are two additional productions of 
prime interest to the student of this period of American 
literature and history. 

William H. Prescott. William Hickling Prescott (1796- 
1859) is one of the most fascinating of the New England 
historians. He had the misfortune to lose one of his eyes 
through an accident, and the sight of his other eye was almost 
entirely lost through sympathetic infection; but his deter- 
mination to make a historian of himself was not to be broken 
by this handicap. He employed readers and continued to 
collect notes in his own particular field of research. His 
first work was in Spanish histor3^ The Reign of Ferdinand 
and Isabella (1837). He followed up this successful venture 
by his delightful History of The Conquest of Mexico (1844) 
and The Conquest of Peru (1847), two books that read like 
romance, and finally by an incomplete History of the Reign 
of Philip the Second (1855). The truth is that there is a 
good deal of highly romantic material in these histories, 
particularly in The Conquest of Mexico and The Conquest of 
Per VI, for Prescott depended implicitly on the exaggerated 
and laudatory accounts of the Spanish conquerors of these 
countries; and besides, he was himself an adherent of the 
romantic rather than the strictly scientific school of histo- 
rians. Hence, while his books are still delightful reading, 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 97 

Prescott's history is subject to correction by modern research. 
His imagination, his wonderfully vivid descriptions, and his 
attractive literary style are not to be discounted, however, 
and these characteristics together with the inherently inter- 
esting nature of his material have kept his books alive. 

John Lothrop Motley. A more dependable recorder of 
facts and a profounder interpreter of the underlying phi- 
losophy of history was John Lothrop Motley (18 14-187 7). 
After studying in Gbttingen, Germany, he returned to 
America to devote himself to writing history. His early 
efforts met with little encouragement, but he persisted until 
he won a well-deserved fame. He devoted ten full years 
of his life, partly in America and partly in Holland, to the 
study of Dutch history before he published his great work 
called The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856). He continued 
his researches in this field, and in i860 he duplicated the 
success of his first work by publishing the first two volumes 
of his History of the United Netherlands. It was eight years 
before the last two volumes were ready to be added to this 
monumental work. A few years later he completed his 
last contribution to Dutch history. The Life and Death of 
John of Barneveld (1874). In Europe as well as in America 
Motley's histories are still recognized to be of the first class 
both for careful research and judicious analysis of causes 
and effects in history, and for the brilliance and power of 
his style. While the subject-matter of his histories is for- 
eign to our own country, Motley's enthusiasm for democratic 
ideals and his zeal for human liberty and the heroic sacrifices 
men have made for it make his work thoroughly American 
in spirit. 

George Bancroft and John Fiske. George Bancroft (1800- 
1891) and John Fiske (1842-1901) devoted themselves 
almost entirely to American history. Bancroft gave the 
best efforts of his life to his History of the United States 
(1834-1882), published in six volumes. This work is 
recognized both for its scholarly accuracy and for its simple 
and effective style. Fiske, though a younger writer than 
the other members of the school, holds a secure place 
as a scholarly historian and as an expository philosopher. 
His chief merit lies in his ability to present in clear and 
convincing style the complex problems of history and philoso- 
phy without unduly antagonizing the preconceived notions 



9 8 History of American Literature 

of his readers. His best works are The Beginnings of New 
England, The American Revolution, The Idea of God, and 
Essays Historical and Literary. 

Francis Parkman. For younger readers the historical 
works of Francis Parkman (1823-1893) take precedence in 
interest over all others in this class of writing. His long 
series of volumes covering the struggle between the English 
and French colonists in North America and his entrancing 
first voliune, covering an adventurous trip made into the 
Western wilderness in 1846, makeup the most fascinating 
and trustworthy historical narratives that have so far 
appeared in America. The California and Oregon Trails 
(1847-9), Parkman 's first volume, is a good one for the 
young reader to begin with. It is as thrilling as an imag- 
inative story of adventure, and yet it is all true to fact, 
being based on historical records and the actual personal 
experiences of the adventurous young historian. After 
the exposure incident to the collection of the material for 
his first volume, Parkman's health failed, and he suffered 
an affliction of the eyes which left him, like Prescott, almost 
blind. With a courage and fortitude bom of genius, he 
overcame all obstacles and continued to gather material 
for his series of volumes dealing with the history of the 
colonial period and Indian life. 'He had already prepared 
the manuscript for the first of these volumes The Con- 
spiracy of Pontiac (185 1), when another affliction left him 
lame for life. After an interval of fourteen years there 
began to appear in due succession seven other volumes 
dealing with the same general theme, "France and England 
in North America." Perhaps after the two books already 
mentioned, Montcalm and Wolfe (1884) and A Half Century 
of Conflict (1892), are the most entertaining of Parkman's 
output. 

Summary. Looking back in a brief survey of this dis- 
tinguished group of New England historians, we may 
conclude that Motley and Parkman are the greatest from 
the point of view of literary grace and power; that Prescott 
is the most romantic, and for that reason perhaps the most 
entertaining for the average reader; and that Bancroft 
and Fiske are the most scientific. For the young reader 
Parkman is far and away the most desirable one to begin 
with in the ffori to culttvate a taste for historical reading. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 99 

THE NEW ENGLAND POETS 

Introductory statement. The New England poets outside 
of the major group, including Emerson, Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell,^ are not of very great 
importance. One of them, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, however, 
approaches very nearly to the rank of the major group and 
deserves special mention here. After recording a few of the 
minor New England poets, we must make some brief men- 
tion of the so-called "New Poetry," which has taken its rise 
chiefly in New England and in the Middle West during the 
first two decades of the twentieth century. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836- 
1907) belongs with Edmund Clarence Stedrnan and Bayard 
Taylor in the group of literary men who deserve high com- 
mendation for their accomplishment in several spheres of 
literary activity, but who perhaps fall just a little short of 
that final spark of genius which would place them in the first 
rank. Aldrich was bom in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
and though he lived for short periods in New Orleans and 
New York, he spent the happiest days of his boyhood in the 
New England town, as The Story of a Bad Boy, an autobio- 
graphical reminiscence, amply proves. He entered business 
in New York, but, in 1855, upon the publication of "The 
Ballad of Baby Bell" and other poems which gained some 
popular success, he entered upon a literary career. He was 
connected with several New York papers, and published a 
number of voltmies of prose and verse ; but- he seems to have 
failed to attract any large following. Just after the Civil 
War he removed to Boston to engage in editorial work, and 
here he made his home until his death in 1907. Between 
1 88 1 and 1890 he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly, a 
position which is usually recognized as the very highest 
attainable among literary journalists. Here he was asso- 
ciated with practically all of the chief New England writers, 
and he aspired in his own creative work to be ranked with 
the greatest. His early poetry was touched with a sort of 
extreme sentimentalism, the tearful ballad which first 
brought him popular applause, "Baby Bell" being typical. 
A strong inclination for the purely sensuous and beautiful, 
no doubt, led him into some early extravagances, but these 



iSee Part II, pp. loi, 184, 266, 301, 344, for sketches of these poets. 



loo History of American Literature 

he afterwards carefully pruned away, so that his later work 
shows a marked restraint and refinement. He confesses 
that at one time he was entranced by mere external beauty 
of form and rhythm, but that in his maturer attitude toward 
his art he cared more for the grace and beauty that dwell 
with unadorned truth. There seems to be little question, 
however, but that Aldrich's work as a whole is overdone in 
its refinement, finish, and classic polish. Out of the many 
volumes of poetry and prose which he published, there must 
be selected a representative volume of his best songs and 
sonnets as his permanent contribution to our poetry. His 
two notable successes in prose, The Story of a Bad Boy and 
Marjorie Daw, both delightful narratives, will doubtless 
continue to hold a high place among the best American 
prose. 

J. G. Holland. Dr. Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881) 
belongs to the older school of New England poets, though 
he was born as late as 18 ig, the year in which Lowell was 
bom. He wrote books of many kinds and was a successful 
lyceimi lecturer. His long narrative poems, Bitter-Sweet 
(1858) and Katrina (1867), reached a circulation of more 
than a hundred thousand copies each, and it may be said 
that they deserve the broad popular approval which they 
attained. Some passages from his longer poems, such, for 
example, as the cradle song from Bitter-Sweet, beginning. 

What is, the Httle one thinking about? 
Very wonderful things, no doubt! 

Unwritten history! 

Unfathomed mystery! 
Yet he laughs and cries, and- eats and drinks, 
And chuckles and crows, and nods and winks, 
As if his head were as full of kinks 
And curious riddles as any sphinx! 

have become popular through frequent quotation and 
declamation ; and many of his shorter poems have secured a 
similar place of fixed popularity in the general mind of our 
citizenship, such, for example, as the following well-known 
poem: 



"Artistic or Creative Period'' loi 

WANTED 

God give us men ! A time like this demands 

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands; 

Men whom the lust of office does- not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; 
Men who possess opinions and a will ; 

Men who have honor, — men who will not lie; 
Men who can stand before a demagogue, 

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking ! 
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog 

In public duty, and in private thinking: 
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, 
Their large professions and their little deeds, — 
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps. 
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps ! 

After he was fifty Dr. Holland became editor of Scribners 
Monthly and lived in New York, but his most significant 
work was produced in New England. 

Some minor poets. Among the minor men poets of the 
New England states, mention should be made of Samuel 
Francis Smith (1808-1895), of Boston, a Baptist minister 
who wrote several familiar hymns but whose greatest success 
was his song which has become the best known of our patri- 
otic hymns — namely, "America";^ Jones Very (1813-1880), 
a native of Salem, graduate of Harvard, member of the 
transcendental group, and author of a large number of 
graceful short poems and sonnets; John Godfre}^ Saxe 
(181 6- 1887), of Vermont, a clever writer of humorous verse; 
Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), of Massachusetts, 
author of an excellent translation of Dante's Inferno and a 
number of other poetical works of a distinctly high quality; 
and George Edward Woodberry (1855-), of Massachusetts, 
for a number of years connected with Columbia University 
in New York as professor of comparative literature, equally 
famous as a critic and general essayist and as a poet, partic- 



15. F. Smith was a member of the famous Harvard class of 1829, and is 
referred to as follows by Oliver Wendell Holmes in the poem, "The Boys," 
read at the reunion of the class on its thirtieth anniversary: 

And here's a nice youngster of excellent pith, — 
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; 

But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — 
Just read on his medal, "My Country of thee!" 



102 History of American Literature 

ularly as a poet of broad patriotism and philosophic insight 
into life. 

Women poets. New England has been particularly pro- 
ductive of women poets of merit. Foremost among these 
should be named Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), who was 
engaged in the abolition and other reform movements and 
wrote several plays, much general prose, and many poems. 
Her "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written early in the 
Civil War under the stress of intense emotion, patriotic 
fervor, and religious ecstasy, is the only production of Mrs. 
Howe's which has survived in popular favor. Other women 
poets are Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), a cotton-mill worker of 
Lowell, Massachusetts, who wrote many pleasing but light 
and sometimes over-sentimental poems for children; Emily 
Dickinson (1830-1886), a recluse of Amherst, Massachusetts, 
author of a niunber of excessively condensed but strikingly 
original lyrics; and Celia Thaxter (183 6-1 894), the daughter 
of a lighthouse keeper and author of highly colored but 
vivid prose in her volume called Among the Isles of Shoals, 
and of several wellnigh flawless sea poems, such as "The 
Sandpiper." Celia Thaxter's lyrics are especially suitable 
for young readers, and they have been frequently included 
in juvenile reading books. 

THE NEW POETRY IN NEW ENGLAND 

Edwin Arlington Robinson. Among the score or more 
of the more recent New England poets, Edwin Arlington 
Robinson (1869-), Robert Frost, and Amy Lowell may 
be singled out for special consideration. Mr. Robinson 
was bom in Maine and educated at Harvard, though on 
account of the decline of his father's health he left college 
before he graduated. His first volume of poetry was called 
The Children of the Night (1897), a rather gloomy book, 
though full of promise. It contains some short character 
sketches in a somewhat cynical mood, suggestive of the later 
work of Edgar Lee Masters in this kind. Then he went to 
New York to try to make his way by writing. In 1902 he 
published a volume called Captain Craig, containing several 
long poems in blank verse and a sheaf of lyrics and sonnets 
and adaptations from the Greek. His third volume. The 
Town down the River, made up chiefly of character studies, 



' ' A rtistic or . Creative Period " 103 

appeared in 19 10, and his fourth, The Man Against the Sky, 
in 19 16. It will be seen that Mr. Robinson has published 
rather slowly, but he has shown a steady growth in his art, 
and in this last volume he has reached a decidedly high level 
of poetic power. In the poem "Ben Jonson Entertains a 
Man from Stratford" particularly he has succeeded in pre- 
senting a lively and vigorous portrait of two notable charac- 
ters in English literature — namely, Ben Jonson and William 
Shakespeare. The title poem, too, "The Man Against the 
Sky," and the character sketch "Flammonde" are excellent 
poems. Miss Lowell says, "Mr. Robinson deals with some- 
thing which may fitly be called raw human nature, but 
human nature simple, direct, and as it is. Those last three 
words contain the gist of the whole matter. In them lies 
Mr. Robinson's gift to the 'new poetry'; simple, direct, and 
as it is."^ 

Robert Frost. Robert Frost (187 5-), though born in 
California, was educated in New England and finally mar- 
ried and settled down as a farmer poet in New Hampshire. 
He has studied very closely the strange psychology and 
habits of the surviving types of the earlier New England rural 
population. In reading his two volumes, North of Boston 
(19 1 4) and Mountain Intervals (19 16), one is at first in doubt 
whether to consider the strange material as prose or poetry, 
for the author avoids sedulously all of the ordinary poetic 
diction and ornamentation, and his style is almost painfully 
bald and austere in the presentation of the simple New 
Hampshire rural life. But over all the crudeness and com- 
monplace incidents which he chooses to write about, Mr. 
Frost manages to cast the soft light of genuine poetry. He 
merely portrays the ordinary daily tasks, such as the mend- 
ing of a broken wall, harvesting the apples, or picking the 
blueberries, presenting them from the farmer's simple, 
human point of view; and under the realism of his homely 
style these incidents take on a genuine poetic coloring and 
prove to be worthy subjects for poetic treatment. 

Amy Lowell. Miss Lowell (1874-) is a member of the 
famous Abbott Lowell family, her brother A. L. Lowell 
being just now the president of Harvard University, and 
Miss Lowell herself being the best known of the modern 



^Tendencies of Modern Ainerican Poetry, p. 52. 



I04 History of American Literature 

school of imagists and free verse poets. In A Dome of 
Many-Colored Glass (19 12), Sword Blades and Poppy Seed 
(1914), and Men, Women, and Ghosts (1917), Miss Lowell 
has made her most distinctive contribution to the new school 
of free verse (the vers libre of the French) poetry, known 
popularly as the school of imagists. Many of the new 
poets have discarded the regular stereotyped forms of rhythm 
and rime, and adopted .a sort of irregular phrasal rhythm, 
by which they claim to gain more freedom in unifying the 
image and more latitude in the choice of the exact word 
which will convey the poetic thought, mood, or symbol as 
conceived by the imagination. The influence of the imag- 
ists of the Far East, particularly the poets of Japan and 
China, is also acknowledged, and it is evident that Walt 
"Whitman's free rhythm verse has had considerable weight 
with the new poets in leading them to decide upon the form 
for their poems. In the preface to their first anthology, 
Some Imagist Poets {igi$y, the following principles were 
laid down for the guidance of the group: 

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always 
the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word. 

2. To create new rhythms — ^as the expression of new moods — and 
not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not 
insist upon "free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We 
fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individ- 
uality of a poet may often be better expressed in free- verse than in con- 
ventional forms. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea. 

3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. 

4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). 

5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor 
indefinite. 

6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very 
essence of poetry. 

It will be observed that there is nothing very, new in these 
principles. The essentials of the new poetry may be said 
to have been laid down by Poe in his essay on "The Poetic 
Principle." He argued for originality of expression, for the 
creation of new rhythms to express new moods, and for 



1 1 he English members of the imagist group represented in So7ne Imagist 
Poels, published successively in 191 4, 191 5. and 1916, are Richard Aldington, 
F. S. Flint, and D. H. Lawrence; and the American representatives are 
Amy Lowell, "H. D.," and John Gould Fletcher. 




AMY LOWELL 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 105 

concentration or brevity of poetic expression; and all poets 
strive for the exact word, for vivid images, and for clear and 
distinct, if not "hard," effects in their verse. Whatever the 
worth or the final effects of this new type of verse may be, 
we must admit that the imagists have at least helped to 
bring about a marked revival of interest in poetry during 
the past decade, and we may confidently hope that out of 
this revival of interest there will eventually emerge some 
products of permanent value. The following poem by 
Miss Lowell will illustrate the imagist's art in its simpler 
forms. 

THE GIFT 

See! I give myself to you, Beloved! 

My words are little jars 

For you to take up and put on a shelf. 

Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, 

And they have many pleasant colors and lustres 

To recommend them. 

Also the scent from them fills the room 

With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses. 

When I shall have given you the last one 
You will have the whole of me, 
But I shall be dead. 

Miss Lowell has also written a good deal of criticism on the 
new poetry, as in her recent volume, Tendencies in Modern 
American Poetry (191 7), and she is generally acknowledged 
as the leader of the school of imagists both in England and 
in America. Two other American poets are distincth^ iden- 
tified with this school — namely, "H. D." (1886-) formerly 
Hilda Doolittle, of Philadelphia, now the wife of the English 
imagist poet, Richard Aldington; and John Gould Fletcher 
(1886-), of Little Rock, Arkansas. 

THE NEW ENGLAND WRITERS OF FICTION 

The importance of New England fiction. In recent 3^ears 
the writers of fiction seem to take precedence in all parts of 
our country over the poets and general prose writers, both in 
number and in popularity. Certainly in New England dur- 
ing the last half of the nineteenth century the novelists and 
short-story writers easily assume the place of greatest impor- 



io6 History of American Literature 

tance. We may begin with Hawthorne and trace the 
succession of writers of fiction on down through Louisa 
May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 
Edward Everett Hale, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Donald 
G. Mitchell, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Sarah 
Ome Jewett, Alice Brown, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and 
dozens of additional minor writers of fiction. Of these we 
have treated Hawthorne^ more at length elsewhere, and 
touched upon Aldrich 's stories in the more detailed treat- 
ment of him as a poet in the preceding section;^ for the 
others we have little more than space enough to record their 
most important productions, trusting that the students will 
be induced by these brief notes to read as widely in this 
field of our literature as time will permit. 

Louisa M. Alcott. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), the 
daughter of the noted transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, 
wrote a number of books which have for many years held 
their place at the very top of our juvenile classics. Little 
Women appeared in 1868, and it was an immense success 
from the very first. It was followed by other volumes in 
the same vein, among them Little Men, An Old-fashioned 
Girl, Eight Cousins, and Rose in Bloom. Many an American 
boy and girl has learned to read good books by the frequent 
thumbing of these well-known juveniles. The moral tone 
is high, the home atmosphere attractive, and the style 
vigorous and sympathetic. In fact, these books leave little 
to be desired as stories for young folks. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe; "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Though 
Harriet Beecher Stowe (181171S96) is the author of a dozen 
or more volumes, she is best known by a single book. Uncle 
Tom's Cabin (1852). By lighting upon the exact psycho- 
logical moment in the happy coincidence of a popular national 
theme with the temper and thought of the time, Mrs. Stowe 
made of this book one of the most powerful influences in 
the history of our country. Without a doubt. Uncle Tom's 
Cabin was one of the big forces which helped to bring about 
the Civil War: and since it voiced the sentiment of so large 
a number of our people and was on the successful side in the 
issue of the abolition of negro slavery in America, it has 
inevitably taken its place as a classic in our literature. It 



iSce Part II, p. 143. 2 ggg p^rt I, p. 99. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 107 

has no great merit purely as a work of art: it over-idealizes 
the negro in making him nobler in character than the white 
people themselves, it is crude and faulty in plot structure, 
it is sensational in many of its incidents, it is an avowed 
purpose novel; and yet in its evident sincerity of purpose, 
in its fervid emotional appeal, and in its intense zeal for the 
reform of the evils which it portrays, the book rises into the 
realm of power if not of pure art. It must be classed as a 
purpose novel and remembered chiefly because the purpose 
for which it was written was a worthy and righteous one and 
was successfully achieved in the outcome of the struggle 
which it helped to precipitate. Some of Mrs. Stowe's other 
works have been highly praised by literary critics, but they 
are now rarely read save by those who wish to discover the 
secret of Mrs. Stowe's popular success in Uncle Tom's Cabin. 
The daughter of the famous New England preacher, Lyman 
Beecher, and the sister of the still more famous pulpit orator, 
Henry Ward Beecher, she showed in all her work the preach- 
ing and missionary instinct which is characteristic of the 
New England ministerial class. Practically all of her 
stories show this preaching or missionary spirit. In her 
New England stories she did much to interpret the local 
types of character, as in The Minister's Wooing (1859), The 
Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), and especially in Old Town Folks 
(i860), and Old Town Fireside Stories (187 1), two volumes 
of short stories which preceded the work of such well 
known writers as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne 
Jewett, and Alice Brown. But after all Mrs. Stowe will be 
remembered almost entirely as the author of Uncle Tom's 
Cabin, for as Professor Trent says, "Once, and once only, 
did she display the requisite emotional power, and fortu- 
nately for her with a theme of worldwide interest. Thus she 
was enabled, almost at the beginning of her career, to write 
— not a great work of literary art — but what it would be 
hypercritical not to term a great book."^ 

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Richard Henry Dana, Jr. 
(1815-1882), wrote the well-known sea tale. Two Years 
before the Mast (1840). It is the realistic story of his own 
experiences in a long cruise on a sailing vessel from Boston 
around Cape Horn to California and back. For graphic 



^A History of American Literature, p. 193. 



• io8 History of American Literature 

description, stirring incident, and romantic interest, the 
book is a prime favorite with young readers. 

Donald G. Mitchell. Donald Grant Mitchell (182 2-1 908), 
a native of Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, won wide 
popularity through his sentimentalized essays strung on a 
thin thread of romance in Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) and 
Dream Life (1857) published under the pen name of "Ik 
Marvel." The light and genial humor, dreamy idealism, 
and persistent optimism, and the delicate and tender senti- 
ment which is infused into these volumes keep them alive 
among a certain class of readers. Mitchell's later and more 
pretentious nature prose in Wet Days at Edgewood and My 
Farm at Edgewood and his warmly appreciative literary 
criticism in English Lands, Letters, and Kings and American 
Lands and Letters, though pleasantly written and more 
highly esteemed by their author than his earlier more 
romantic work, have not reached the wide circle of readers 
which Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life commanded 
and still command. 

The Short-story writers. Among the better class of 
short stories Edward Everett Hale's single masterpiece, 
"The A-Ian without a Country" should be remembered. 
Ehzabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (-1844-191 1), of Massa- 
chusetts, made quite a sensation with her Gates Ajar (1868), 
a book which is more of a rhapsody or mystical revelation of 
religious enthusiasm than a novel, a sort of death song in 
prose representing the intense spirit of reincarnated New 
England Puritanism in its rapt vision of a new heaven and 
a new earth made sacred through suffering. The Civil War 
had but recently closed when the book appeared, and thou- 
sands of persons who had lost their loved ones in that terrible 
period found solace and comfort in the ecstatic vision set 
forth in Gates Ajar. Among Mrs. Ward's later works is 
Beyond the Gates (1883), which continues the theme of her 
first famous work. She is somewhat more of a moralist 
than an artist perhaps, but her intense subjectivity and 
exalted idealism give a peculiar power to her stories, especi- 
ally in soothing the hearts and stirring the moral natures 
of her many sympathetic readers. Rose Terry Cooke 
(1827-1892), of Connecticut, is both poet and short-story 
writer. She is particularly happy in her humorous charac- 
terization of New England types. Her best stories are col- 



"Artistic or Creative Period" log 

lected in The Deacon s Week (1884) and Huckleberries Gath- 
ered from New England Hills (1891). Mary E. Wilkins 
Freeman (1857-) and Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-) have 
written a number of excellent short stories of New England 
life. Mrs. Freeman's best volumes of short stories are A 
Humble Romance (1887) and A New England Nun and Other 
Stories (1891). Miss Jewett's best short stories are col- 
lected in the volumes called A White Heron and Other Stories 
(1886) and Strangers and Wayfarers (1890). Both of these 
women have written longer stories, Mrs. Freeman's best 
novels being Pembroke (1894) and The Portion of Labor 
(1901); and Miss Jewett's best longer works beings, 
perhaps, Deephaven (1871) and The Cotintry of the Pointed 
Firs (1896). AHce Brown (1857-) of New Hampshire, is 
another of the women writers who have made good use of 
New England rural types in her fiction. Her dialect stories 
in Meadoiv Grass (1895), Tiverton Tales (1899), and The 
Country Road (1906) are her most distinctive contribution 
to the New England locol-color literature already made 
familiar by the work of Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman. 
Some critics are inclined to rank Miss Brown's work even 
higher than that of the two other women just named. In 
the faithful reproduction of the New England atmosphere, 
in humor, pathos, and photographic realism, and in beauty 
and grace of style. Miss Brown's stories are certainly among 
the most artistic products of their kind. In her longer 
novels, too, such as The Story of Thyrza (1909) and John 
Winterborne's Family (19 10), she has succeeded in main- 
taining a high level of artistic power. 

Two important realists among New England fiction 
writers have been reserved for the close of this section — 
namely, William Dean Howells and Henry James, Jr. 

William Dean Howells: his literary position. Though 
bom and reared in Ohio, William Dean Howells (183 7-) has 
become intimately associated with the great New England 
writers and he is inevitably classed with them. He learned 
to set type in his youth, and he may be said to have edu- 
cated himself largely at the printer's case and at editorial 
desks. In i860 with his friend John James Piatt he pub- 
lished a volume called Poems of Two Friends. Howells 
then wrote a campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln, and 
in 1 86 1 he was rewarded by an appointment as consul at 



no History of American LiteratUr 

Venice, a position which he filled for four years. Here he 
developed his taste and increased his culture by a close study 
of Italian art and architecture. His four years in Venice 
may be called the period of his college education. As a 
result of his studies he published two excellent books of 
descriptive and critical observation, — namely, Venetian 
Life and Italian Journeys. These were but the preparation 
for the realistic fiction which he was to begin soon after his 
return to America. He had already had contributions 
accepted by the Atlantic Monthly, and in 1866 he became 
assistant editor of this important literary periodical. Then 
in 187 1 he was made editor-in-chief, a position which he held 
for ten years. Later he became associated with Harper s 
Monthly and The North American Review, and he is still 
(19 1 8) on the active staff of Harper's in the conduct of the 
Editor's Easy Chair. During this long period of over half 
a century in which he has been connected with these promi- 
nent periodicals, Mr. Howells has produced a marvelous 
number of excellent books. He is ranked among the very 
first of American literary critics, travel writers, and essay- 
ists, and in his capacity as editor and adviser of young writers 
he has justly earned the affectionate title of "Dean of 
American Letters." With his added accomplishments as a 
creative writer in his novels and literary farces, he is undoubt- 
edly the most distinguished of our present day literary men. 

His novels. Howell's chief claim to permanent fame rests 
upon his realistic novels. The theory of fiction which he 
has expanded both in his critical writings and in his own 
practice is that a novel should present life as it really is, 
without the admixture of romantic elements which go to 
make up the larger part of most works of fiction. He 
realized that the artist must select his material from the 
mass of facts presented in real life and that the creative 
imagination must mold this material into an artistic whole; 
but he refused to admit improbable and highly colored inci- 
dents and romantic settings merely to increase interest. 
Their Wedding Journey (187 1) was the first of Howells' 
long series of realistic narratives dealing with New England 
life and character. Perhaps the best among his thirty or 
more volumes which may be classed as fiction are A Foregone 
Conclusion (1874), The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), A Mod- 
ern Instance (1882), and The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), 




ELMWOOD, LOWELL'S HOME AT CAMBRIDGE 



"Artistic or Creative Period" iii 

Of these The Rise of Silas Lapham is usually designated as 
Howells' masterpiece. It certainly takes rank among the 
four or five greatest American novels. After he was fifty 
years of age Howells came under the influence of the Russian 
philosopher and novelist Tolstoi, and from that time on his 
works showed a seriousness of purpose in the criticism of 
life which had been quite absent from his earlier stories. 
Of those more mature stories the best are A Hazard of New 
Fortunes (1889), The World of Chance (1893), The Traveler 
from Altruria (1894), and Through the Eye of a Needle (1907). 

His farces. In another type of literature Howells undoubt- 
edly takes precedence over all other American writers — 
namely, in the literary farce. The farce is not usually 
considered among the finer types of literature, but Howells 
has put into his farces so much of good, healthy humor; so 
much of genial satire, sparkling repartee, and brilliant wit; 
so much of keen analysis of real life and real characters that 
his productions in this kind must inevitably be recognized 
as belonging to pure literature. Among the best of his 
man\^ farces are A Counterfeit Presentment, The Parlor Car, 
The Sleeping Car, The Elevator, The Mouse Trap, and The 
Unexpected Guest. . 

Henry James, Jr.: his position. Henry James, Jr. 
(1843-19 1 5), was born in New York City, lived in Boston 
for a time, and was educated partly in Boston and partly 
abroad. He doubtless inherited his tendency toward 
subtle psychological analysis from his father, Henry James, 
the distinguished New England theologian; this point may 
be further substantiated by noting that William James, the 
brother of Henry James, Jr., was the late well-known pro- 
fessor of psychology at Harvard and the author of some of 
the most important modern books in his field. In 1869 
Henry James, Jr., went abroad, and he lived most of his 
later life in France and England. In fact, so continuous 
was his residence in England that by many he is considered 
an English rather than an American writer. Just before 
his death in 19 15, when the United States had not yet 
declared war against Germany, he renounced his allegiance 
to America and claimed citizenship in England in order to 
devote his property and his literary gifts more fully to the 
cause of the Allies in the great World War. But we may 
claim the works of this writer as at least partially American, 



112 History of American Literature 

and as such we are led to class him with the New England 
rather than the New York School. 

His fiction. The fiction of Henry James, Jr., is usualty 
judged to be too difficult for young readers. He is, like 
Browning in poetry, a sort of subtle analyst of the soul, and 
in his psychological studies he deals with material which is 
uninteresting because it is peculiar and unusual and largely 
unintelligible to young readers. But to older and more 
thoughtful readers James's work, particularly his earlier work, 
is a source of delight. In his later work his style becomes 
so complex, so hair-splitting in thought, and so shadowy, 
figurative, and obscure in expression, that very few readers 
can follow him with pleasure. He has been called the inter- 
national novelist, because most of his books have a sort of 
international setting and deal with the peculiar point of 
view of persons of one nationality when brought into contrast 
with those of another nationality. His best stories are 
The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1878), An International 
Episode (1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and The 
Wings of a Dove (1902). Among his best short stories may 
be named "The Real Thing," "The Lesson of the Master," 
and "Sir Edmund Ome," a ghost story. James' books of 
literary criticism, like his novels, demand close attention in 
the reading. His fine analysis of the style of our greatest 
novelist in his critical volume Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 
English Men of Letters Series deserves special mention. 
James has done much critical work also in 'foreign literature 
especially in his admirable estimates of French authors. 

The Southern Group 
preliminary survey 

General conditions in the South. The South was some- 
what slower than the North in developing her literary 
resources. It is true that during the colonial period, the 
first literature written within the present boundaries of the 
United States was produced in the Virginia Colony; but 
the attitude of the settlers in the Southern Colonies toward 
literature was always amateurish and incidental rather than 
professional and serious, and the result was that very few 
of the greater minds in the South during the first two and 
a half centuries of our history turned to literature as the 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 113 

principal sphere for their intellectual efforts. And even 
since 1865, on account of the scarcity of large cities and the 
almost total absence of publishing facilities, there have been 
no nationally important literary centers in the South. In 
a section devoted largely to varied agricultural pursuits, 
the population would naturally be widely scattered and 
diverse in mode of life and thinking. On the other hand, in 
more concentrated and congested centers where commercial 
and manufacturing interests attract the population into 
large city groups, we should naturally expect literary centers 
and publishing interests to be developed. In the North 
and East, even before the beginning of the nineteenth 
century. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston had already 
grown into comparatively large commercial and manu- 
facturing centers. In the South there were scarcely any 
large cities or thickly populated districts even up to the end 
of the century. Baltimore, Charleston, Savannah and New 
Orleans, were ports of small importance. With the single 
exception of Richmond, Virginia, the inland cities such as 
Columbia, South Carolina, and Raleigh, North Carolina, 
were small in size and of little significance as literary centers. 

Charleston and Richmond as literary centers. Of all 

these towns Charleston and Richmond are the only ones 
that may be said to have become in any sense literary centers. 
At Charleston William Gilmore Simms was a sort of leader 
around whom a number of ambitious young men like Paul 
Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod gathered, deferring 
to his judgment and regarding him in literary matters as 
guide, philosopher, and friend. Besides Simms' home, 
John Russels' book store was one of their places of meeting, 
and in 1857, the same year in which the Atlantic Monthly 
was founded, RusseWs Magazine was launched under the 
editorship of Paul Hamilton Hayne. ^ 

This periodical bade fair to become a strong rival of the 
Southern Literary Messenger at Richmond, but it suspended 
publication at the approach of the Civil War. The domi- 
nant attitude of the Southern people seemed to be one 
of receptivity rather than active participation in literary 
matters. The Southern colonial gentlemen preferred to 



iSee Hayne's essay on "Anti-bellum Charleston," reprinted in Library of 
Southern Literature, Vol. V. 



114 History of American Literature 

get his education and his Hterature from England. More- 
over, he looked upon literature as a means of diversion and 
amusement for his idle moments rather than as a serious 
employment for his mature powers. To him the manage- 
ment of his estate and participation in politics made up the 
serious business of life. Even until late in the centuty, the 
common schools of the South lagged far behind the system 
of public education developed in the North and East. The 
methods of intercommunication were inadequate and poorly 
maintained. Roads were bad, and mail routes were slow 
and uncertain. Periodicals were few in ntmiber and com- 
manded only a meager patronage among the richer families. 
The Southern Literary Messenger (1834-1864) at Richmond, 
it is true, attained under the editorship of Poe, J. R. Thomp- 
son, and others, a notable rank in the quarter of a century 
immediatel}^ preceding the Civil War, but even this journal 
was forced to suspend publication in the midst of the war. 

The influence of slavery. The economic success of negro 
slave-holding on Southern plantations had drawn most of 
the slaves from Northern and Eastern owners where slave 
labor was unprofitable, and so the South became the great 
slave section of our country long before the middle of the 
century. Slave traffickers and shipowners had found a 
profitable market for their trade in the South, and they 
prosecuted their business so successfully as to fill the country 
with African slaves. Though there were a few Southern 
slave owners who believed in the abolition of slavery, the 
South as a whole naturally took the position that slavery 
was a good thing both for the black and for the white race. 
The question of states' rights, or local self-government 
by the individual states, was closely bound up with 
the question of the abolition of slavery, and it was 
upon the constitutional grounds of states' rights that the 
argument for the continuation of slavery in the South was 
primarily based. The' policy of territorial expansion and 
the creation of new states out of the territory acquired by 
the Flordia and the Louisiana purchases also brought the 
question of slavery to the front, for it was necessary to 
determine beforehand whether the states to be carved out 
of the newly acquired territory should be free or slave- 
holding. Out of all this controversy there naturally arose 
in the South, as also in the North, a notable school of orators. 




Coiirlesy o) the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association, Baltimore 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

The new stati,;e of Edgar Allan Poe. completed in Rome by Sir Moses Ezekiel 
of Richmond, Virginia. It is to be brought to Baltimore as soon as the war is over. 



''Artistic or Creative Period" 115 

Localism in recent years. Following the bitter periods 
of controversy, war, and political reconstruction, which we 
need not stop to discuss here, came the period of readjust- 
ment and return to the peaceful arts of life. During this 
period one of the distinctive features developed in our 
national literature has been the growth of localism in the 
various sections of the country. In the South particularly 
has this note of localism found many well-defined forms of 
expression. In almost every southern state there have 
arisen worthy writers of fiction and verse whose principal 
appeal has been in the interpretation of distinct racial types 
and social conditions and local backgrounds. The fact 
that there were certain more or less distinct and segregated 
groups or classes of people in the South has greatly stimu- 
lated the endeavor to express this note of localism. The 
Georgia "cracker," the Tennessee and Kentucky moun- 
taineer, the Louisiana Creole, the Texas cowboy and frontiers- 
man, and the several types of negro life are some of the 
distinct classes which have attracted treatment in this 
local-color literature. In addition to these, the upper or 
ruling classes of white citizens, descended from the early 
English or Anglo-Saxon settlers, have distinct and more or 
less stable local characteristics. 

Classification of the authors. The major Southern poets, 
as usually named, are Edgar Allan Poe, Sidney Lanier, 
Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Henry Timrod.'^ It is dififi- 
cult to single out any of the prose writers who rise above the 
large school of minor authors, but, we may name, after Poe, 
who is equally notable in prose and poetry, William Gilmore 
Simms and John Pendleton Kennedy among the older writers, 
and Joel Chandler Harris, F. Hopkinson Smith, George 
Washington Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, and O. Henry 
(Sydney. Porter) among the later writers. Simms and 
Kennedy can hardly be ranked as authors of national 
importance, though perhaps Simms approaches such a 
standard; but their influence in the South, where literature 
was slow in developing, certainly gives them a prominent 
place in their own section. Joel Chandler Harris in his 
successful exploitation of negro folk-lore, and in his in- 
cidental character creation, has distinguished himself some- 

^See the sketches of these authors, Part II, pp. 377, 438, 434, 426, re- 
spectively. 



ii6 History of American Literature 

what more securely than have his contemporary writers 
of local-color fiction, and O. Henry has made a place for 
himself by his distinct advance in the art of the American 
short story. We may conveniently discuss the Southern 
authors under the divisions of orators, poets, and writers 
of fiction. 

SOUTHERN ORATORS 

Oratory in the South. Throughout the history of the 
nation the South has been particularly prolific in the produc- 
tion of distinguished orators and political writers. South- 
erners have always seemed to take more naturally to legal 
and forensic debate, political writing, and oratory than to 
the milder and more purely artistic forms of literary expres- 
sion. They have particularly proved themselves to be 
skilful manipulators of public bodies in spontaneous spoken 
address. In fact, the energy of the best Southern minds 
has been largely expended in the development of political 
and other forms of emotional or spontaneous oratory. For- 
merly in the South every ambitious youth turned to politics 
and law as a career, and rarely thought of taking up pure 
literature except as a side issue or with some feeling of 
condescension. During the earlier periods of our national 
history such names as Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, 
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, 
John Marshall, and John Randolph, all of Virginia; and 
Charles Pinckney, Henry Laurens, and Jol^n Rutledge of 
South Carolina; and William Pinkney of Maryland are 
synonymous with the best of early American oratorical 
and forensic power and achievement. A long list of notable 
Southerners who have risen to oratorical eminence since 
these early times might be given here, but it seems better 
to confine our brief notice to a few of the most important 
orators of the nineteenth century. 

William Wirt. William Wirt (17 7 2-1 834), of Maryland 
and later of Virginia, has already been mentioned as the 
biographer of Patrick Henry, and in this connection it was 
noted that it is impossible to tell just how much of Henry's 
famous speech on liberty we owe to Wirt's own facile oratori- 
cal pen. It is certain that Wirt possessed the instinct for 
effective oratory, as is amply illustrated by his famous 
speech at the trial of Aaron Burr for treason, and by his 
oft-repeated piece called "The Blind Preacher," said to be 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 117 

an accurate portrayal of the Reverend James Waddell, a 
noted Presbyterian minister of Virginia. The last-named 
selection is to be fomid in the volume called Letters of a 
British Spy (1803), a series of letters which the author 
pretended, were left in an American inn by a British ofificer. 
This and The Life of Patrick Henry (181 7) are the chief 
contributions of Wirt to our literature. He wrote in a 
somewhat florid and emotional style, but he had acquired 
from his model. The Spectator Papers, a good deal of the 
grace and finish of the Addisonian prose, and he was recog- 
nized in the early nineteenth century, according to Professor 
Trent, as "the most conspicuous literary man in the South." 

Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Y. Hayne. 

During the long controversial period which preceded the 
Civil War, Henry Clay (177 7- 1852), born in Virginia but 
reared in Kentucky, John Caldwell Calhoun (i 782-1 850) 
and Robert Young Hayne (i 791-1839), both of South 
Carolina, were the most prominent of the earlier Southern 
leaders in Congress. Clay was a natural orator and a born 
conciliator. Because of his efforts to compromise the 
differences between the North and the South, he is known 
in history as "the great pacificator." Calhoun is recognized 
as the profoundest expositor of the doctrine of states' rights 
and the strict construction of the Constitution, and the 
chief opponent of the Northern school advocating union 
and strong federal centralization, led by Daniel Webster 
and the later abolitionists. Hayne was a disciple of Calhoun 
in his interpretation of the doctrine of states' rights and the 
Constitution. In what is known as "The Great Debate," 
in 1830, Hayne was pitted against Webster; while history 
has decided in favor of Webster's position, contemporary 
opinion records that Hayne proved himself a worthy oppo- 
nent to the great New England orator. 

L. Q. C. Lamar and Henry W. Grady. Since the Civil 
War, particularly during the period of reconciliation follow- 
ing the period of reconstruction, two names stand out with 
peculiar prominence in the banishment of sectional animosity 
and the re-welding of the North and the South — namely, 
those of L. Q. C. Lamar (1825-1893), of Mississippi, whose 
"Eulogy of Charles Sumner"^ is one of the glories of Ameri- 
can oratory, and Henry Woodfin Grady (1851-1889), of 
Georgia, whose magnificent speeches on "The New South," 



ii8 History of American Literature 

delivered in 1886 before the New England Society of New 
York City, "The South and Her Problems," delivered at 
Dallas, Texas, in 1887, and "The Race Problem," delivered 
in Boston j^st a few weeks before his death in 1889, are 
recognized among the most eloquent and finished orations 
in our literature.^ 

SOUTHERN POETS 

The ante-bellum minor poets. Poe is the only Southerner, 
doubtless, who would receive unanimous suffrage as a major 
American poet.^ But in the ante-bellum period, beginning 
with Francis Scott Key (i 780-1 843), of Maryland, whose 
fame rests upon the fact that he wrote during the War of 
181 2 what has since become our national anthem, "The 
Star-Spangled Banner," the South produced a large number 
of minor poets. Some of them have thrown off single 
lyrics of admirable grace and sweetness, others have poured 
forth volumes of mediocre poetry of merely local interest or 
sectional pride, and still others have produced a consider- 
able amount of poetry worthy of general national attention. 
Among the single-poem class of ante-bellum Southern poets 
may be named Richard Henry Wilde (1789-1847), of Georgia, 
whose beautiful lyric, "My Life is Like the Summer Rose," 
is included in every American lyrical anthology; William 
Gilmore Simms (1806-1870), of South Carolina, better 
known as a novelist, but remembered also for a few of his 
many poems, and particularly for his poetical characteriza- 
tion of General Francis Marion in "The Swamp Fox"; 
Alexander Beaufort Meek (181 4- 1865), born in South 
Carolina but associated almost entirely with Alabama, 
author of the stirring patriotic lyric "Land of the South" 
and two excellent bird lyrics, "The Mockingbird" and 
"vSong of the Blue Bird"; Theodore O'Hara (1820-1867), 
of Kentucky, whose "The Bivouac of the Dead" is recog- 
nized among the noblest of our elegies or dirges; Edward 
Coate Pinkney (1802-182 8), of Maryland, whose lyric, 
"A Health," called forth the highest praise from Poe and is 
still greatly admired by all lovers of musical verse; Philip 
Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), brother of the novelist, John 

2 For Lamar's "Eulogy on Sumner" and extracts from Grady's speeches, 
with biographical sketches and portraits of these orators, see Southern 
Literary Readings, Rand McNally <^ Co., 1913. 

iSee Part II, p. 377. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 119 

Esten Cooke, of Virginia, whose "Florence Vane" is but one 
of several excellent lyrics in his volume called Froissart 
Ballads and Other Poems (1847). 

Civil War poets. Besides Henry Timrod,i who is treated 
elsewhere in this volume, the war poets of the South 
include the following: Albert Pike (1809-1891), born in 
Boston but for fifty years of his life identified with the 
South, particularly Arkansas, wrote a great deal of poetry, 
most of it of an imitative classic quality. His "Ode to 
the Mockingbird," his fiery war song "Dixie" (not the 
dialect words usually sung to the well-known air), and 
his melancholy lyric called "Every Year" may be read 
as examples of his best lyric productions. Dr. Francis 
Orray Ticknor (1822-187 4) is remembered chiefly as the 
author of the stirring lyric of heroism, "Little Giffen," 
which has been named among the five or six best short poems 
in American literature. The natural and spontaneous poetry 
of this good physician, whose home near Coliunbus, Georgia, 
was known as a refuge for the sick and wounded Confederate 
soldiers during the Civil War, should have long ago received 
fuller recognition from our literary historians. James 
Ryder Randall (1839-1908), of Maryland, sang himself 
into fame with the fervent war lyric, "Maryland, My 
Maryland!" which has been called "The Marseillaise of the 
Confederacy." Margaret Junkin Preston (1820-189 7) was 
bom in Pennsylvania, but she married Colonel J. T. L. 
Preston, of the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, 
Virginia, and devoted her life and talents to the Southern 
cause. She wrote a large amount of narrative and lyric 
verse. Her best work was a number of lyrics commemora- 
tive of Southern war heroes, such as "Gone Forward" 
and "The Shade of the Trees," commemorating the deaths 
of Generals Lee and Jackson respectively. John Reuben 
Thompson (1823-1873), of Virginia, who was for fourteen 
years editor of the most important literary journal of the 
South, The Southern Literary Messenger, is chiefly remem- 
bered for his war lyrics, among which may be singled out 
"Music in Camp," "Ashby," and "The Death of Stuart." 
The last to be named, but by no means the least in merit, 
is Abram Joseph Ryan (183 9- 1886), better known from his 
priestly office as Father Ryan. He was born in Virginia, 

^See Part II, p. 426. 



I20 History of American Literature 

but lived in several Southern states, his longest residence in 
any one place being at Mol^ile, Alabama, in connection with 
the noted did Catholic church of St. Mary's in that city. 
His best known lyrics are "The Sword of Lee," "The Mystic," 
and "The Conquered Banner." He also wrote a long 
narrative poem in blank verse, which, though not of the 
highest poetical merit, has a pathetic personal interest. 
It is called "Their Story Runneth Thus," being a story of 
self-renunciation and sacrifice, full of Roman Catholic 
coloring, and supposed to be based on the poet's own per- 
sonal experience in renouncing his earh^ love for a beautiful 
girl who afterwards, upon his advice, became a nun. Father 
Ryan's verse is the simple and natural outpouring of a 
pure and loyal soul, and it touches the hearts of many 
readers who would not be moved by work of a more 
finished literary' art. 

Post-bellum poets. Sidney Lanier^ and Paul Hamilton 
Hayne^ are treated elsewhere at more length. The minor 
Southern singers that have appeared since the Civil War 
are quite too numerous to be spoken of in detail. Irwin 
Russell and Madison Cawein, however, are distinctive 
enough to demand special mention; a few of the other later 
poets may be treated more briefly. 

Irwin Russell. The story of Irwin Russell (1853-1879), 
"the boy poet of Mississippi," is a pathetic one and may 
easily be used to "point a moral or adorn a tale." He was 
bom in Port Gibson, Mississippi, where his father was a 
practicing physician. At the age of three months the child 
suffered a severe attack of yellow fever, and it is thought that 
his frail constitution in after life was the result of this 
early infection. He was sent to the schools of St. Louis, 
Missouri, after which he returned to Mississippi and pre- 
pared himself for the bar, being admitted to the practice 
by a special act of the Mississippi legislature two years 
before he reached his majority. His mental acuteness was 
remarkable. He was also talented in music, being able to 
play on several instruments with ease. His fondness for 
the banjo led, by a happy accident, to his composition or 
improvization of negro songs similar to those he heard the 
servants singing around his father's home. Many of these 



^See Part II, pp. 438, 434. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 121 

humorous negro songs were afterward published in Scribner's 
Monthly, beginning in 1876. This was an entirely new type 
of writing, and it at once attracted other writers into the 
same field. Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page 
have both acknowledged their indebtedness to and their 
appreciation of the art of Russell in negro dialect. The 
young writer was attracted to New York City to continue 
his literary activities. In the meantime he had lost his 
father, and he was now practically alone and adrift in the 
world. He yielded to his desire for the use of drugs and 
intoxicants, and soon broke down his health. He fell into 
a serious illness and was impelled by remorse to leave New 
York where his new friends were charitably taking care of 
him. He worked his way down to New Orleans on a coast 
steamer, and tried to recover his health by abstinence and 
thus reinstate himself in the profession of journalism. He 
became a reporter on the New Orleans Picayune; but fate 
was against him, and shortly afterward he died in a cheap 
boarding house. 

Russell's dialect poems. The whole output of Russell's 
genius makes up but a thin volume of verse. His most 
notable single production in negro dialect is the operetta 
called " Christmas Night in the Quarters." " In this produc- 
tion," says Joel Chandler Harris in his introduction to the 
volume published after Russell's death, "Russell combines 
the features of a character study with a series of bold and 
striking plantation pictures that have never been sur- 
passed. In this remarkable group, — if I may so term it, — 
the old life before the war is reproduced with a fidelity that 
is marvelous." "The Song of the Banjo," a lyric in this 
operetta, is perhaps the best known of Russell's poems, but 
"Nebuchadnezzar," "Marsr John," "Business in Missis- 
sippi," and many others are equally amusing. 

Madison Cawein. Madison Julius Cawein (1865-1914), 
of Kentucky, the most prolific and all in all the most sensu- 
ously lyrical of recent American poets, should be more 
widely known than he is at present. He published during 
his life, an enormous amount of verse, issuing some twenty- 
odd original books of poetry besides a volume of selected 
poems. He found his subjects largely in his minute observa- 
tions of nature and in his romantic treatment of the outdoor 
world. Naturally in the large number of poems which he 



122 History of American Literature 

published there will be found many trivial themes and some 
artificial conceits. But taken at his best, Cawein deserves 
the high praise which William Dean Howells and other 
critics have accorded him. He has been called "the Keats 
of Kentucky," and his enthusiastic delight in nature pic- 
tures and in foreign and native myths gives point to the 
comparison. Cawein wrote too much, however, and his 
lack of restraint and of severe self-criticism has doubtless 
injured his fame. He will, nevertheless, we think, be 
remembered as one of the most truly gifted of American 
nature lyrists. 

Other lyrists. John Bannister Tabb (1845-1909), of 
Virginia, was just old enough to enter the Confederate Army 
toward the close of the Civil War. He was associated with 
Sidney Lanier as a prisoner of war, and on several occasions 
he voiced his appreciation of that poet's magnetic and 
chivalrous personality. After the war he became a Roman 
Catholic priest and devoted himself largely to teaching in 
Catholic schools. He wrote many brief, almost epigram- 
matic lyrics, all of them being decidedly pleasing and satis- 
fying to the ear as well as stimulating and suggestive to the 
imagination. Samuel Minturn Peck (1854-), of Alabama, 
is one of the cleverest of all our writers of light society verse. 
His lyrics have a fascinating lilt and a charming melody, and 
are at the same time interfused with a spirit of cavalier 
gallantry, quiet humor, and an amusing touch of playful 
satire and badinage. His best known lyrics, perhaps, are 
"The Grapevine Swing," "Aunt Jemima's Quilt," "Grand- 
mother's Turkey-tail Fan," "Doctor Bessie Brown," and 
"The Southern Girl." Robert Burns Wilson (1850-1916) 
and Cale Young Rice (187 2-), both of Kentucky, have 
written excellent lyric verse. The last-named poet is just 
now in the prime of his life, and he has a decidedly promising 
future before him, if we may judge by the quality of his 
already published poems and plays. Judge Walter Malone 
(1866-1915) was born in northern Mississippi; he made his 
home almost entirely in Memphis, Tennessee, and is recog- 
nized as the leading poet of his adopted state. His best 
known, though not his most artistic poem, is called "Oppor- 
tunity." Frank Lebby Stanton (185 7-), born in South 
Carolina, but usually thought of as a Georgian on account 
of his long connection with the Atlanta Constitution, is a 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 123 

newspaper poet of wide popularity. In his daily column 
of verse and humorous skits to the Constitution, he has 
inevitably turned out many mere space fillers; but there 
is a distinct singing quality to his verse, and when the 
best of his songs shall have been selected from the vast 
amount he has produced, there will be a considerable 
volume of worthy poetry to transmit to posterity. Stark 
Young (1S81-) of Mississippi, now professor of English 
literature at Amherst College, Massachusetts, has published 
some finely modulated lyric verse in his volume, The 
Blind Man at the Window and Other Poems. He has also 
written a poetic drama, "Guenevere," and several one-act 
plays of distinction in a volume called Mardretta and 
Other Plays. 

SOUTHERN WRITERS OF FICTION 

Introductory Statement, Aside from Poe, whose import- 
ant work in the American short story is treated 
elsewhere, the writers of fiction in the South prior to 
the Civil War were few in number and of little 
importance. John Pendleton Kennedy, William Gilmore 
Simms, and John Esten Cooke are the only ante-bellum 
Southerners who deserve attention in this field of litera- 
ture. Since the Civil War, however, a large school of novel- 
ists and local-color short-story writers has sprung up in the 
South. The following list of names will indicate the impor- 
tance of the Southern group among our popular writers of 
fiction during the last half century: Richard Malcolm John- 
ston, F. Hopkinson Smith, Joel Chandler Harris, George 
Washington Cable, James Lane Allen, Charles Egbert Crad- 
dock, Thomas Nelson Page, John Fox, Jr., Grace King, 
Ruth McEnery Stuart, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, 
Henry Sydnor Harrison, 0. Henry, and a host of others. 
0. Henry has been singled out as the most strikingly original 
of the later short-story writers, and examples of his art 
have been given in the body of the present volume. ^ 

John Pendleton Kennedy. John Pendleton Kennedy 
(i 795-1870) was born in Baltimore, and educated there for 
the bar. He later became Secretary of the Navy under 
President Fillmore. Literature was to him, as to all South- 
em gentlemen of his time, a mere side issue or pastime. 

I See Part II, p. 445. 



124 History of American Literature 

His serious work was in law and politics, but he found time 
to do a great deal of literary reading and to write three 
volumes of fiction. His first book, Swallow Barn; or, A 
Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832), is a series of sketches 
held together by a slight plot element. It succeeds admi- 
ably in its attempt to present accurately and vividly the 
early social life of Virginia. Kennedy's most pretentious 
novel is Horse-shoe Robinson; or, A Tale of the Tory Ascend- 
ency (1835). The setting is in the South Carolina of the 
Revolution, and the stirring scenes of those early times are 
portrayed with wonderful naturalness and realism if not 
with perfect historic accuracy. The hero, an unlettered but 
valorous and resourceful patriot, is one of the really notable 
character creations in our early fiction. The scene of 
another historical romance, Rob of the Bowl (1838), is laid 
in Colonial Maryland during the days of the proprietary 
government, and the book is said to present a very trust- 
worthy portrait of colonial life. Kennedy was one of the 
first men to give generous encouragement to Poe, and he had 
much intercourse and correspondence with other distin- 
guished literar}' men both in America and in England. His 
connection with Thackeray is particularly interesting; it is 
claimed that Kennedy wrote or at least provided the material 
for the fourth chapter of The Virginians. Had he devoted 
himself more to literature and less to law and politics, 
Kennedy would doubtless have attained a much higher 
rank among American writers than he is now accorded. 

William Gilmore Simms. Next to Poe, William Gilmore 
Simms (1806-1870) was the most potent literary influence 
in Southern literature in the period immediately preceding 
the Civil War. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, 
in 1806 and was left an orphan at an early age. He managed 
to prepare himself for the practice of law, but he was soon 
attracted into authorship, beginning as a newspaper editor. 
He gathered around him at Charleston a coterie of young 
writers and acted as a kind of host or literary adviser to 
them. Among the most prominent of these were the poets 
Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry Timrod. About 1833 he 
began the publication of his long series of romances, Guy 
Rivers: a Tale of Georgia (1834) being his first successful long 
story. This was quickly followed by The Yemassee: a 
Romance of South Carolina (1835) and The Partisan: a Tale 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 125 

of the Revolution (1835), his two best stories. It is impossible 
here to follow Simms through his long and active literary 
and political career. He was a loyal and enthusiastic 
Southerner, and espoused with almost partisan zeal prac- 
tically every important social and political movement in 
which his section became involved. He was a prodigious 
composer, writing and publishing nearly a hundred volumes 
in the various kinds or types of literary composition. The 
plain fact is that he wrote too much and too rapidly to give 
his work that polish and finish of style which is essential to 
literary masterpieces. He had a marvelously fertile imagi- 
nation and could turn out an enormous amount of exciting 
romance within the space of a few hours. He rarely cor- 
rected or revised his first drafts, and hence his works are 
full of the usual errors due to haste and over-confidence. 
But under the heat of his fertile imagination he could write 
interesting, if somewhat melodramatic, narratives; and 
his conception of character, his descriptions of nature, and 
his presentations of intense dramatic situations show evi- 
dences of strong native power and irisight. He has been 
called "the Cooper of the South," and his Indian stories, 
his tales of adventure, and his historical romances may be 
compared not altogether unfavorably with Cooper's work 
in these fields. 

John Esten Cooke. John Esten Cooke (i 830-1 886), "a 
Virginian of Virginians," won his reputation as a romancer 
before the Civil War, but he may also be classed among the 
post-bellum writers, for he wrote many popular stories 
based on his experiences and observations of that memorable 
struggle. He did not take a college education as did his 
elder brother, the poet Philip Pendleton Cooke, but decided 
to prepare immediately for the practice of law in his father's 
office. However, he devoted much of his time to general 
reading and literary work. In 1854 he published -perhaps 
his most important book, The Virginia Comedians, a novel 
dealing with life in the Old Dominion just prior to the 
Revolution. When the Civil War opened, he enlisted as a 
private in the Confederate Army and was soon promoted 
to the rank of major. He served as a staff officer with 
Generals Stuart and Pendleton, and thus was enabled to 
come into personal contact with a nimiber of the leading 
Confederate generals. He kept full notes of his experiences, 



126 History of American Literature 

and later he used this material in writing his stirring romances 
of the Civil War. Even during the war Cooke was con- 
stantly writing. He published in 1863, less than a year 
after Jackson's death, a biography of the great Southern 
general. Surry of Eagle's Nest appeared in 1866 and won 
immediate popularity in the South, and is still frequently 
read by Southern youths. Then followed a long series of 
tales full of dramatic adventure and highly colored war 
romance, such as Mohun, Hilt to Hilt, Wearing the Gray, 
Hammer and Rapier (Grant and Lee). These later works, 
though highly entertaining to young Southern readers, 
cannot be classed as first-rate literature. The straining 
after exciting incident and melodramatic situation and the 
lack of perspective and massing are the chief faults of this 
kind of fiction. 

Wide geographical distribution of later fiction writers. 

The wide geographical distribution of the later Southern 
writers of fiction indicates the relative importance of the 
element of localism in their work. Nearly every state and 
nearly every type of life in the South has had its exploiter 
in fiction. Beginning with the Atlantic coast and moving 
westward, we may take a rapid glance over the field and 
at the same time preserve something of a chronological 
sequence. 

F. Hopkinson Smith. Francis Hopkinson Smith (1838- 
191 5) was born in Maryland, but he moved to New York to 
find work and later became quite a traveler, and his work 
deals almost as largely with New England as with the South. 
He seems, too, to belong to the very latest school of writers 
of fiction, for he did not begin to write stories until he was 
past fifty. He spent a busy life as a constructive engineer, 
a painter, a lecturer, and a writer. In Colonel Carter of 
Carter sville (1891) he succeeded in drawing a charming por- 
trait of • an old-time Southern gentleman. So delicately 
himiorous, vividly realistic, and thoroughly human is this 
idealized portrait that one is almost willing to place Colonel 
Carter among the few great character creations in our 
literature. Smith's later novels, which may be classed as 
realistic romances, are written in an optimistic and pleasing 
style. Caleb West, Master Diver (1898), which draws upon 
Smith's experience as a constructive engineer in marine 
work, The Fortunes of Oliver Horn (1902), Kennedy Square 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 127 

(191 1), and Felix O'Day (19 15) may be mentioned as the 
best of his many later novels. Smith was also a painter of 
considerable merit, and many of his later books are illus- 
trated with his own drawings and sketches. 

Thomas Nelson Page. In recent years Virginia has been 
perhaps the most fertile Southern state in the production of 
story writers. Thomas Nelson Page (1853-) began about 
1884 to write negro dialect stories for the magazines, "Mars 
Chan" being the first of these to attract general attention. 
In Ok Virginia (1887) is the title of his first volume. It is 
composed almost entirely of negro dialect stories, and it is 
the consensus of opinion that Page has never surpassed, if 
indeed, he has ever again quite reached the high mark of 
artistic excellence which he set in these faithful portraits 
of the old-time Southern master and slave. In 1898 Page 
published his best long story. Red Rock, A Chronicle of 
Reconstruction. His later novels are somewhat disappoint- 
ing, but the two volumes just mentioned are classics of their 
kind and will doubtless long retain a place of high distinction 
in the list of the best American fiction. 

Other Virginia story writers. Three Virginia women have 
attracted a wide circle of delighted readers; namely, Molly 
Elliott Seawell (i860-), author of Throckmorton, The 
Sprightly Romance of Mar sac (1806), and other novels; 
Mary Johnston (1870-), for a number of years a resident 
of Alabama, author of Prisoners of Hope (1898), To Have 
and To Hold (1899), Audrey (1902), tales of Colonial Vir- 
ginia; Lewis Rand (1908), a tale of Virginia in the early 
nineteenth century; and The Long Roll (191 1) and Cease 
Firing (19 12), Civil War stories introducing Generals Jackson 
and Lee respectively, besides several other romances; and 
Ellen Glasgow (1874-) author of The Voice of the People 
(1900), The Battle Ground (1902), The Deliverance (1904), 
and other novels. In the past ten years Henry Sydnor 
Harrison of Richmond has made fame by his interesting and 
carefully written novels, Queed (191 1), V. V.'s Eyes (19 13), 
and Angela's Business (19 16). 

Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett 
(1849-), though bom in Manchester, England, came to 
America when she was sixteen, lived for some time in 
Tennessee and other Southern states, and finally in Wash- 



128 History of American Literature 

ington, D. C, so that she may be classed as a Southern writer. 
Her first successful novel, That Lass o' Lowries (1877), 
deals with the working classes in England, but she wrote 
many stories of American life, such as Through One Admin- 
istration (1883), dealing with social and political life in 
Washington City, and In Connection with the De Willoughby 
Claim (1899), the scene of which is laid in Tennesseee during 
the Civil War. The best known of all Mrs. Burnett's 
stories, however, is the juvenile classic, Little Lord Fauntleroy 
(1886). The long golden curls, the velvet knickerbocker 
suit, and the broad white collar of the seven-year-old boy 
hero became a fad and furnished a model for many a fond 
American mother. The moral tone of the book has also 
helped to give it vogue among American readers. 

Richard Malcolm Johnston. Among Georgia writers of 
fiction Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-1898), for some 
years prior to the Civil War a professor of English in the 
University of Georgia and afterward principal of a boarding 
school for boys in Sparta, Georgia, and in Baltimore, 
Maryland, wrote a series of character sketches dealing in a 
realistic and himiorous fashion with Georgia rural types. 
These were collected and published in several volumes, the 
best known being Dukesborough Tales; or Old Times in 
Middle Georgia (1871). The realism and accuracy of his 
portrayals of life and character make his works a trust- 
worthy source for the study of social conditions in the South 
during the last half of the nineteenth century, but the lack 
of plot interest and the absence of the glamour of romance 
have led to an almost total neglect of them by modern 
readers. Another earlier Georgia writer, Judge Aug^istus 
Baldwin Longstreet (1790-1870), wrote a similar series of 
excellent realistic sketches and published them in a voltune 
called Georgia Scenes (1835). The large infusion of genuine 
humor in this volume has kept it alive even to the present 
day. 

Joel Chandler Harris. So well has Joel Chandler Harris 

( 1 848-1 908) succeeded in exploiting the interesting field of 
negro folklore which by chance he stimibled into, and also 
so admirably has he portrayed other phases of life in the 
South, that some critics are ready to accord him a place 
among the major American writers of recent years. By his 
simple, unassuming, and yet thoroughly artistic style, by 




From a photograph by Francis Benjamin Johnston 
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 129 

his keen observations of man and nature, by the richness 
and sweetness of his humor and pathos, by the constantly 
sane and healthful attitude toward life which he maintained, 
and also b}^ his powerful and apparently almost unconscious 
character creation, Harris seems destined to take his place 
among the distinctively original writers which America has 
so far produced. His realm was a restricted one, it is true 
for he did not succeed with the full-scope novel; but he has 
worked his own particular vein with such painstaking and 
loving artistry that he has succeeded in adding a new domain 
to our literature, that of the folktale retold in artistic setting, 
and he has certainly added at least one immortal portrait 
to our gallery of fictitious characters — namely, "Uncle 
Remus." 

His preparation. Harris was born near Eatonton, a village 
in Putnam County, Georgia. He obtained an elementary 
education at rural schools and at an Eatonton academy. 
When he was fourteen, Harris became an assistant printer 
on a journal called the Countryman, edited by J. A. 
Turner on his plantation in Putnam County. Here the 
boy may be said to have completed his education. He 
set type, ran the press, and did all the necessary work around 
the printing office. Mr. Turner encouraged him, allowed 
him free use of his own library, and eventually accepted 
contributions from him. But the best part of young Har- 
ris's education was gleaned from sources outside of books. 
He studied closely the life and nature about him, he listened 
to the old negroes tell their fascinating animal tales, and he 
absorbed the language, superstitions, and habits of his 
colored as well as his white neighbors. In a book called 
On the Plantation, written many years later and dedicated 
to Mr. Turner, Harris has woven his personal experiences 
into a wonderfully delightful picture of this old-time life 
on a Georgia plantation. Then came Sherman's army 
marching through Georgia, and the old life was a closed 
book. Harris later became a newspaper man, working on 
several papers and finally settling down to a long journalis- 
tic career on the Atlanta Constitution. He lived a quiet 
and retired life at his home called "The Wren's Nest" in 
the suburbs of Atlanta, rarely appearing in any public 
capacity other than that of his daily editorial contribu- 
tions to the Constitution. 



130 History oj American Literature 

His negro dialect stories. It was while he was serving as 
a reporter on the Constitution that his opportunity came. 
One of the regular contributors who had been writing negro 
dialect sketches for the paper retired, and Harris was asked 
to supply the deficiency thus created. He began under the 
nom-de-plume of "Uncle Remus" to put upon paper the 
stories he had heard in his youth on the plantation. These 
stories were later collected in the volume called Uncle 
Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881). Three other 
volumes in the same vein, Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), 
Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Told by Uncle 
Remus (1905), have been almost equally popular; and as a 
by-product of the interesting animal tales in these four 
volumes, the character of Uncle Remus himself has emerged 
as one of the permanent contributions to American, if not 
to world, fiction. The animal characters are also charm- 
ingly presented. What young American has not laughed 
at the pranks of Brer Rabbit, or rejoiced at the discom- 
fiture of Brer Fox, or delighted in the antics of the other 
wonderful members of the animal company which Uncle 
Remus' vivid imagination has called up before him? The 
conversation of these talking beasts is so natural and in 
such perfect keeping with their characters that we are 
unable to detect a single false note or offer a single improve- 
ment upon the work as it lies before us. It is said that 
Brer Rabbit represents allegorically the weak and timid 
negro race among his stronger white neighbors, who are 
represented by the other animals, and since he is deficient 
in strength he has to resort to trickery and cunning to pro- 
tect himself. In this view there is a delightful vein of mild 
satire underlying all the tales. 

Harris' other stories. Joel Chandler Harris wrote many ex- 
cellent stories of other kinds, as in Mingo, and Other Sketches 
in Black and White (1884), Free Joe, and Other Georgian 
Sketches (1887), Balaam and His Master, and Other Sketches 
and Stories (1891), which are largely tales of the negro 
in connection with his white master; The Chronicles of 
Aunt Minervy Ann (1899), a well-nigh successful attempt 
to create a negro female character as a counterpart to 
Uncle Remus; At Teague Poteefs (1883), a story of the 
Georgia mountaineers; Tales of the Home Folks in Peace 
and in War (1898), and On the Wing of Occasions (1900), 



"Artistic or Creative Period'' 131 

stories of various types of middle Georgia life at home and 
on their travels; and finally Wally Wander oon a^td His 
Story-Telling Machine (1903), Little Mr. Thimblefinger and 
His Queer Country (1894) and its sequel Mr. Rabbit at Home 
(1895), a series of the most delightful fairy stories yet 
written in America. He also essayed one longer novel, 
Gabriel Tolliver, a Story of Reconstruction (1902), but this 
is not so successful as are his short stories and tales. 

Louisiana Story Writers. Louisiana is well represented 
by George Washington Cable, Grace King (185 2-), and 
Ruth McEnery Stuart (1856-). Miss King has done some 
distinctive work in her artistic presentation of New Orleans 
life, her best stories being collected in the volume called 
Balcony Stories (1893). Mrs. Stuart has produced good 
pathetic and humorous negro dialect stories, as in A Golden 
Wedding, and Other Tales_ (1893), good Southern rural life 
stories as in Simpkinsville (1897), and a wonderfully charm- 
ing story of Arkansas rural life in Sonny (1894), the life 
history of the only child of Deuteronomy Jones, a backwoods 
Arkansas farmer. 

George Washington Cable. George Washington Cable 
(1844-) deserves fuller treatment. He discovered an unique 
field of local-color or racial characteristics in the old Creole 
life in Louisiana, particularly in the old French quarter of 
early nineteenth century New Orleans. His voliime of 
tales, Old Creole Days (1879), is a distinct contribution to the 
American local-color or regional short story. Two of his 
best long novels, The Grandissimes (1880) and Bonaventure, 
a Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana (1888), prove Cable's 
ability to handle a larger theme in an artistic and satisfying 
way. He portrays the old Creole life with minute accuracy, 
loving sympathy, and artistic insight and imagination. 
In sorne of his later novels he has turned to the Reconstruc- 
tion and Civil War period, as in John March, Southerner 
(1894) and The Cavalier (1901) respectively, but he is not so 
convincing here as in the field which he made peculiarly 
his own in his earlier fiction. In his last book, The Flower of 
the Chapdelaines (19 18), Cable comes again to the old Creole 
life of New Orleans, and the critics of the volume have been 
almost unanimous in their verdict that the novelist has 
lost none of his original charm in this return to the field of 
his first inspiration. 



132 Ht story of American Literature 

Charles Egbert Craddock. The Tennessee mountaineer 
and the wild seclusion and primitive equipment of his 
mountain retreats is the peculiar realm which Charles 
Egbert Craddock, whose real name is Mary Noailles Murfree 
(1850-), has found for the exercise of her literary gifts. 
She spent much of her time in intimate study of the scenes 
and charracters which she portrays, and hence her descrip- 
tions glow and glisten with all the beauty of the wild 
mountain scenery, and her presentation of the strange life, 
language, and social customs of the mountain people is 
convincing and realistic. W. M. Baskervill says of this 
author, "Her magic wand revealed the poetry as well as the 
pathos in the hard, narrow and monotonous life of the 
mountaineers, and touched crag and stream and wood and 
mountain range with an enduring splendor."^ She began 
her career in the early seventies by writing stories of the 
mountain folk for the magazines, and she published serially 
almost all of her later stories in the Atlantic Monthly. In 
1884 she collected her first volume of short stories under the 
title. In The Tennessee Mountains, and since that time Miss 
Murfree has published more than a dozen novels and volumes 
of short stories, most of them dealing in one way or another 
with the life of the Tennessee mountaineers.. Perhaps her 
best novels are The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains 
(1885), In the Clouds (1887), The Despot of Broomsedge Cove 
(1889), and The fuggler (1897). 

Other Tennessee story writers. Sarah Barnwell Elliott 
(18 ), who was born in Georgia and lived for a tirne in 
Texas, but whose home has been for many years in Sewanee, 
Tennessee, should be classed with Charles Egbert Craddock, 
inasmuch as she deals almost exclusively with the Tennessee 
mountaineers in her stories. She is the author of numerous 
novels dealing with moral and religious problems, not in the 
way of the ordinary purpose novel, but from the artistic 
point of view of the profound effect of these problems on 
human life. Her best productions are the novels Jerry (1891) 
and The Durket S per ret (1897), and a volume of short stories, 
An Incident and Other Happenings (1899), all dealing with 
the Tennessee mountaineer and other social and racial 
problems in the South. Will Allen Dromgoole, of Murfrees- 
boro, Tennessee, the home of Charles Egbert Craddock, is 

'^Southern Writers, Vol. I. 



"Artistic or Creative Period'" 133 

another Tennessee woman who has written successful 
mountaineer and negro dialect stories and poems. Her 
best stories are contained in The Heart of Old Hickory and 
Other Tennessee Stories (1895). 

James Lane Allen. James Lane Allen (1849-), of Ken- 
tucky, has found his most satisfactory field for literary 
exploitation in the Blue Grass region of his native state. 
His first volume of short stories, Flute and Violin, and 
Other Kentucky Tales and Romances (1891), is, many critics 
think, the best product of his art. He paints with an artist's 
enthusiasm the beauties of the Kentucky scene and life. 
There is a certain poetic quality in his prose style, too, which 
is attractive and appropriate to his themes. A Kentucky 
Cardinal (1894) and its sequel Aftermath (1895) are novel- 
ettes full of sincere love and enthusiasm for nature. Tha 
rich and beautiful descriptions of nature in her varying 
moods are woven in with a delicate thread of romance so as 
to make these stories decidedly attractive. The Choir Invisible 
(1897), a longer novel, also found a wide and eager public. 
The Reign of Law (1900) and The Mettle of the Pasture (1903), 
two other larger novels probably did not meet with quite 
so generous a reception, but they, too, were widely read. 
The Reign of the Law is called in its sub-title "A tale of the 
Kentucky Hemp Fields," but the hemp is only the incidental 
background or the symbol of the effects of modem theories 
of evolution on the mind and faith of a young theological 
student. There is a frequent use of symbolism in Allen's 
stories, and in this he may be compared with Hawthorne. 
Sometimes this use of romantic symbolism seems extraneous 
to the theme of the story and has a tendency to retard rather 
than to propel or illuminate the action. Particularly is 
this true of the more recent works of this writer. Allen has 
never published hastily. He works long and patiently to 
gain his best effects. Breaking a silence of nearly six years 
after The Mettle of the Pasture appeared, he published a 
short novel in 1909, The Bride of the Mistletoe, and followed 
it the next year with The Doctor s Christmas Eve. In 19 12 
A Heroine in Bronze, was published, and in 19 15 The Sword 
of Youth. These last stories have not aroused the same 
enthusiasm that greeted his earlier works, and a good many 
readers feel all the more surely that Mr. Allen's first volume 
was his best. 



134 History of American Literature 

John Fox, Jr. Another Kentucky writer is John Fox, Jr. 
(1863-). He has found his subject mostly in the Cumber- 
land mountains of his state and in the peculiar ideas of 
justice and social equity among the mountaineers. His 
earliest success in this field was A Cumberland Vendetta, and 
Other Stories (1896.) His most widely read novels are The 
Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1903), The Trail of the 
Lonesome Pine (1908), and The Heart of the Hills (19 13). 
Two additional volumes of short stories and descriptive 
sketches Hell-fer-Sartain (1897) and Blue Grass and Rhodo- 
dendron (1901), deserve to be mentioned for their faithful 
portrayal of Kentucky scene and life, and particularly for 
the terse realism and dramatic force of some of the stories. 

Two Women Writers of Kentucky. George Madden 
Martin (1866-), of Louisville, has the distinction of pushing 
the range of 'the fiction country down into the elementary 
grades of the public schools in her Emmy Lou stories. 
These stories appeared serially in McClures Magazine and 
were published in book form under the title Emmy Lou, 
Her Book and Her Heart (1902). The realism of child life, 
the intense emotion of the child soul, and the bigness of the 
child's problems was never better presented. Alice Hegan 
(1870-), also of Louisville, before her marriage to the poet 
and dramatist Cale Young Rice, produced two remarkably 
clever and spontaneously hiunorous character stories in 
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1901) and its sequel 
Lovey Mary ( 1 903 ) . 

The Central and Far Western Group 
preliminary survey 

Meaning of the term west. West is a relative term. 
At one time in our history it meant the section of the interior 
just beyond the Atlantic coast settlements; then it meant 
the section beyond the Appalachian range, including the 
Ohio and Tennessee valleys; at another time it meant the 
great Mississippi valley, and then it was extended to cover 
all the northwest territory drained by the Missouri and its 
tributaries; and finally it came to mean the Rocky Moun- 
tains and all the territory beyond, known as the Pacific slope. 
We still speak of the central portion of our nation as the great 
plains of the Middle West, of the territory north and west of 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 135 

Missouri as the Northwest, of that south and west of Missouri 
as the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountain or Pacific slope 
territory as the Far West. In studying the latest division 
of our literature we may designate it as the Central and 
Western Group. We might easily divide it into two or 
more groups, but since the literary history of the entire 
West in reality covers but little more than half a century, 
and since the dominant tone of all this later literature is 
practically identical throughout the nation, we may at 
present conveniently consider in one group the writers from 
the Central and the Far West. 

Period covered: 1865-1918. We shall find that the 
production of literature of permanent value in this latest 
period of our national literature really dates from about 
1865, or the period from the close of the Civil War to the 
present. The West had been already for more than half 
a century rapidly filling up, but the pioneers were engaged 
in subduing the new territory almost exactly as the colonists 
had done along the Atlantic coast at an earlier period, and 
like the colonists, they had little or no time for the develop- 
ment of the arts. Bold pioneers like Daniel Boone, George 
Rogers Clark, and Zebulun Pike had already pierced far 
into the western wilderness, and settlers gradually followed 
to fill up the sections explored. Population advanced along 
the line of least resistance and most promise, that is along 
the valleys of the great drainage systems, such as the Ohio, 
Tennessee, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. At last the 
railroads came to supplant the old methods of overland travel 
in the prairie schooner, the stage coach, and the pony 
express. With the improved methods of transportation 
and impelled by various impulses, such as crop failures at 
home, the discovery of gold and silver from time to time, 
in the new country, and the like, emigrants moved to 
the West, so that by the middle of the century many 
of the Western states had already been admitted to the 
Union and most of the remaining domain was organized 
into territories awaiting admission as soon as the requisite 
number of inhabitants was attained. 

Westward territorial expansion. It is unnecessary to go 
further into the acquisition of the vast western territory 
than to remind the student of American history that Jeffer- 
son completed the important Louisiana purchase in 1803, 



136 History of American Literature 

the year in which Ohio was admitted as a state. The 
wonderful expedition of exploration made by Lewis and 
Clarke in 1 804-1 806 had revealed the character and extent 
of the great Northwest as far as Oregon and the Pacific 
coast. The territory around the Great Lakes had been 
organized by 1809, and Illinois was admitted as a state in 
1818. In 1820 the vast territory north and west of the south- 
ern boundary line of Missouri was organized, under the 
Missouri Compromise, as territory for the making of future 
free states and Missouri was admitted as a state in 1821. 
Wagon roads were opened throughout the West. In 1825 
the Erie Canal was completed, thus uniting by water the 
extreme western lakes with Albany, New York, and opening 
water communication thence south on the Hudson River 
to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1841 a railroad was completed 
as far west as Albany, and ten years later Chicago could be 
reached by rail. It was not until 1869 that the first great 
trans-continental railroad, stretching from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific seaboard, was finally put into operation, but in 
the meantime the overland stage routes had been greatly 
enlarged and improved, so that the rush of population west- 
ward could be at least partially accommodated. Texas 
gained its independence from Mexico in 1836 and applied 
for admission into the Union in 1845. Then followed the 
Mexican War, and by the peace of 1848 the United States 
acquired not only the Rio Grande border territory which 
was in dispute, but also the fine, rich territory on the Pacific 
slope and that northwest of Texas, including California, 
Utah, and New Mexico. In this same year gold was dis- 
covered in California, and in 1849 the Pacific slope territory 
was deluged with population, later proudly designated as 
"forty-niners." In 1850 California was admitted as a 
state. The vast Oregon country, reaching as far north as 
Alaska, had been for a long time claimed by both England 
and the United States, but by a compromise agreement in 
1846 it was divided on the 49th parallel of latitude, the 
present boundary line between Canada and the United 
States. In this year, too, Iowa was admitted as a state; 
in 1848 Wisconsin; in 1858 Minnesota; in 1859 Oregon. 
In 1854 the great struggle between the slavery and anti- 
slavery forces began in the Kansas-Nebraska territory, 
but these states were eventually brought in as free states in 
1861 and 1867 respectively. Thus gradually the whole 



*' Artistic or Creative Period" 137 

belt of the North American continent now occupied by the 
United States was organized into territories and brought 
in as states, and by the end of the Civil War by far the 
greater part of these states had been admitted into the 
Union. 

Character of the western literature. This condensed 
survey of the rapid development of the West will give us a 
basis for judging the literature that was to come from this 
section. The first writings were naturally descriptive of 
the new territory, its life, its possibilities, its resources. 
The records of crude pioneers like' Daniel Boone, and of 
more scientific explorers like Lewis and Clarke, and the 
private records, diaries, and correspondence of other pioneer 
settlers make up the first contribution. The writers were 
simply American emigrants from the Atlantic seaboard. 
Even up until near the last quarter of the nineteenth century 
we shall find that many of the Western writers were born 
and educated in New England, the Middle Atlantic states, 
and the older Southern states, and were Western only in the 
sense that they had moved west with the tide of population 
and were recording Western scene and life as they saw it. 
But in more recent years the native sons of the West have 
come forward to express the real spirit of their section 
and at the same time of the nation at large; certainly the 
most characteristic literary products of the West since 1870 
have come from writers born and educated in their native 
territory. 

Americanism, or the democratic spirit. The expression 
of pure Americanism, of the democratic spirit in its broadest 
significance, is the characteristic note of our Western literat- 
ure. Perhaps this native American spirit has developed more 
distinctly and rapidly in the West because this section was 
freest from the embittering efifects of the Civil War. Its 
territor}^ saw little of the actual military campaigns, and 
its people were easily and quickly absorbed in their problems 
of developing the raw resources of the new country, so that 
they had little time to spend upon vain regrets, clearing 
up old scores, and preparing plans for the reconstruction 
and rehabilitation of the territory devasted by war. The 
Civil War itself was a great educative force, and the tide of 
emigration westward was only one of the effects of the 
diffusion of a resulting general knowledge of the resources 



138 History of American Literature 

and character of our country as a whole. New Western 
towns began to spring up as if by magic. Vast plantations 
of rich agricultural lands were brought under cultivation 
with the invention and introduction of improved machinery, 
and in the Middle West wheat and corn were eventually 
grown in such quantities as to make this section one of the 
great granaries of the world. The Great Lakes and the 
Mississippi River and its tributaries formed the chief arteries 
for commerce, and the steamboat became the common 
carrier for the produce of all the Central West. New 
writers like Mark Twain and Bret Harte came to chant 
the vigorous life of river and mining camp ; great descriptive 
writers like John Muir to describe its wonderful beauty of 
scenery; clear-voiced poets like Joaquin Miller and Edward 
Rowland Sill to sing the songs of the Sierras; and novelists 
like Frank N orris to write the epic of wheat with all the 
complicated financial and industrial machinery involved 
in its production and distribiition throughout the world. 
The wild herds of buffaloes had vanished before the oncom- 
ing tide of civilization, and immense herds of cattle and 
sheep and horses came to take their place. In this rich, 
wild, broad, free country it was but natural that the new 
democratic note should predominate. Most of the writers 
were what we may term self-educated men, that is, they 
rarely had the advantage of a classical or college training; 
they gained their knowledge from actual contact with life 
rather than from books and academic lectures, and they 
were freed, consequently, from the restraints and delimita- 
tions which a fuller knowledge of the older literature and 
standard literary models would have imposed upon them. 
The New York and New England writers had followed 
largely in the beaten literary tracks, and had submitted, 
perhaps unconsciously, to European rather than American 
ideals and standards of literary excellence; but the authors 
of the new West hewed out fresh paths of literary travel 
and followed no standards except such as their own sense 
of fitness fixed for them. 

The spirit of optimism and humor. Besides this demo- 
cratic or national note, one other general characteristic may 
be affirmed of Western literature as a whole : It is peculiarly 
suffused with a spirit of optimism and a sense for the himior- 
ous. Melancholy, gloom, pessimism, the modem note of 




MARK TWAIN AT HIS OLD HOME IN HANNIBAL, MISSOURI 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 139 

morbidness and despair, have found little or no place in the 
literature of the West. Romance is prominent, optimism 
every where apparent, and humor widely diffused. "The 
Laughter of the West" is the title of a chapter in Professor 
Pattee's History of American Literature Since iSyo. Analyz- 
ing the chief contributions of the West to American literature, 
Professor George Edward Woodberry says, "The earliest 
stir of original literary impulse in the West was by way of 
humor. Laughter was bred into the people; it solved many 
situations, it lessened the friction of close personal contact, 
it made for peace, being the alternative for ill-nature or a 
blow. The constancy of it shows it spontaneity. In the 
camps of the miner, on the river steamboats, in the taverns 
of the court circuit, there sprang up inexhaustible anecdotes, 
rallies of wit, yarns, and fanciful lies and jokes on the dullard 
or the stranger. Out of this atmosphere came Lincoln, 
our greatest practical humorist, with that marvelous power, 
turning all he touched into wisdom; and on the free, imag- 
inative side, Mark Twain, our capital example, was blood 
and bone of the Western humor." ^ 

Publishing centers. In so vast a territory and so young a 
business and social organization it was not to be expected 
that definite schools or coteries of writers or any important 
literary centers should be developed. It is perhaps due 
largely to the isolation and widely scattered distribution 
of the Western writers that they have been forced to rely 
more fully on their own independence of thought and 
originality of expression. The publishing centers remained 
largely in the East, it is true, but the demand for fresh 
local literature from all parts of the country. South and 
West alike, was not to be resisted by the Northern and 
Eastern publishers, even if they had desired to resist it, 
a thing which in reality the publishers never did. The 
Western newspapers developed very rapidly, of course, and 
some pubHshing centers like Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. 
Louis, Chicago and San Francisco sprang up to supply the 
growing demand for the publication of both books and 
magazines. The Overland Monthly was established in 1868 
in San Francisco with Bert Harte as its editor, and in 
1880 The Dial, a critical literary journal, made its appear- 
ance at Chicago. 

^America in Literature, p. 158. 



I40 History of American Literature 

The major western writers. The full spirit of the West 
is typified in such writers as Abraham Lincoln, the 
ideal product of democracy, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, 
Joaquin Miller, Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley, 
and William Vaughn Moody. ^ These we have treated in 
Part II, with selections from their writings. It will be 
convenient to treat the remaining writers of the West 
under the headings of Poets, and Writers of Fiction. 

WESTERN poets 

Classification of the poets. Of the western poets we may 
speak of Joaquin Miller, Eugene Field, James Whitcomb 
Riley, and William Vaughn Moody as major poets, though 
there would doubtless be some objection from a purely 
national point of view to the classification of all these as 
major poets. There may be in them some lack of literary 
conformity and adherence to traditions, but these poets 
have voiced a new American ideal, and whether they may 
be classed as major American poets or not is purely an 
academic question. They certainly deserve large attention 
in any well-balanced survey of our literature. These 
writers have all been treated in the body of the present 
voliime. We shall have space here for only a brief treatment 
of the more important remaining Western poets — namely, 
John Hay, with his Pike County Ballads; and Edward 
Rowland Sill, of California. The more modern group may 
be represented by Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg, 
both of Chicago, who belong to the more virile and vital 
branch of the recent so-called "New Poetry"; and Vachel 
Lindsay, of Springfield, Illinois, an experimenter in new 
forms of recitative verse. 

John Hay. John Hay (1838-1905) is probably thought of 
more frequently as a diplomat and a statesman than as a 
literary man, but the time may come when his fame will 
rest more surely on his literary productions than on his 
political achievements. He was born and reared in Indiana, 
but he practiced law in Springfield, Illinois, the home of 
Abraham Lincoln, and he is thought of as belonging to the 
last-named state. President Lincoln appointed the 'young 
lawyer to be his private secretary in 1861, and the remainder 



iSee Part II, pp. 467, 469, 484, 499, 507, 512, 519. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 141 

of Hay's life was spent largely in public service of one kind 
or another. He was for a number of years attached to 
various diplomatic posts abroad, the most important being 
the ambassadorship to England under President McKinley. 
Finally Hay was called to America to become Secretary of 
State under President McKinley, and in this position he 
rendered very valuable services to the nation during the Boxer 
uprising in China. Hay's literary productions include Pike 
County Ballads (187 1), Castilian Days (187 1), a sort of Span- 
ish sketch book which grew out of its author's experiences 
in the diplomatic service at Madrid, and The Bread-winners 
(1883), a novel which he published anonymously for fear 
that his acknowledgment of its authorship might affect 
unfavorably his influence and service as a public man. 
The ballads were first published in some obscure Western 
paper, but they also appeared later in the New York Tribune, 
when Hay, for a brief period during his young manhood, was 
on the editorial staff of that paper. They were rough-hewn 
dialect ballads dealing with the pioneer life of the Middle 
West. Their coarse a»d uncouth realism in thought and 
language, their embodiment of the humorous and the heroic 
ideals of the typical Westerner, the rawest of whom was 
said to hail from Pike County, Missouri, struck a quick 
response in the public esteem, and these six short ballads 
of John Hay's are to-day far more widely known than any 
of his purer and by him more highly esteemed lyric verse. 
"Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle" and "Little Breeches" 
are the most popular of the ballads, though the others are 
made from exactly the same bolt of homespun and are 
almost equally good. Humor, sympathy, courage, inde- 
pendence, heroism are the chief ingredients, though there 
is also a note of pathos. The story of the heroic pilot who 
held the nose of the burning "Prairie Belle," a Mississippi 
steamer, to the bank until all her passengers were safely 
landed, losing his own life in the event, has moved many 
a reader to tears. The pathos is evident in the last stanza. 

He weren't no saint, — but at jedgment 

I'd run my chance with Jim, 
'Longside of some pious gentlemen 

That wouldn't shook hands with him. 
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing, — 

And went for it thar and then ; 
And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard 

On a man that died for men. 



142 History of American Literature 

Edward Rowland Sill. Though born in Massachusetts 
and educated at Yale, Edward Rowland Sill (1841-1887) 
moved to the Far West to engage in business (1861-1866). 
He then went back to the East to study for the ministry, 
but became a teacher, locating first in an academy in Ohio 
and later in the Oakland High School in California, and then 
(1874-1882) he accepted the position of professor of English 
literature in the University of California at Berkeley. 
He finally retired and returned to Ohio to devote himself 
to literature but died within a few years. His successive 
shifts make him a kind of shuttle between the East and the 
West; but he did his best work in the West, so that he may 
fairly be called a Western writer. In fact, the greater part 
of his poetry is based on Western themes ; many of his 
shorter poems show this in both title and treatment, and 
"The Hermitage," his longest poem, is a magnificent 
panorama of the beautiful scenery of coast and mountain 
and stream and lake in the wonderland of the West. 

Let me sirise, and away • 

To the land that guards the dying day, 

Whose burning tear, the evening-star, 

Drops silently to the wave afar; 

The land where summers never cease 

Their sunny psalm of hght and peace, 

Whose moonlight, poured for years untold, 

Has drifted down in dust of gold ; 

Whose morning splendors, fallen in showers. 

Leave ceaseless sunrise in the flowers. 

The purity and sweetness of Sill's language, the sureness 
and sanity of his moral insight, and the epigrammatic 
quality of some of his best poems, notably "The Fool's 
Prayer," will undoubtedly give long life to his work. He 
died when he was just reaching his maturity as a poet, and 
while his achievement is notable even as it is, there is little 
doubt but that, had he lived, Sill would have given the world 
a still greater body of worthy poetry. His work should be 
better known than it is. Such poems as "The Fool's 
Prayer," "Opportunity," "The Contrast," "Life," "On 
Second Thought," "Tempted" will prove to be extremely 
stimulating and inspiring to thoughtful young readers as 
well as to older ones. 



"Artistic or Creative Period'' 143 

Minor poets. We can only give the names of a few of the 
numerous minor poets of the West: J. J. Piatt (183 5-), 
of Indiana, associated with W. D. Howells in their first 
volume, Poems of Two Friends (i860) and the author of 
several other volumes of verse; Maurice Thompson (1844- 
1901), of Indiana, author of many lyrics, but better known 
as a novelist; Will Carleton (1845-1912), of Michigan, 
author of many popular and sentimental ballads of no very 
high literary value, such as "Betsy and I Are Out" and 
"Over the Hill to the Poor House"; John Vance Cheney 
(1848-) bom in the state of New York, but associated with 
the Pacific slope, writer of excellent lyric verse; Edwin 
Markham (185 2-), of Oregon, famous as the author of 
"The Man with the Hoe"; Edith M. Thomas (1854-), of 
Ohio, writer of first-rate lyric verse; and Paul Laurence 
Dunbar (i 872-1906), the negro poet, born and reared in 
Ohio and educated finally at Harvard University, author 
of many humorous and pathetic negro dialect and pure 
English lyrics. 

THE NEW POETRY IN THE WEST 

Edgar Lee Masters. Among the modem or "New 
Poetry" poets Edgar Lee Masters (1868-) is, in the opinion 
of most readers, the most powerful. A descendant of an 
old Virginia family of the pioneering type on his father's 
side and from Puritan stock on his mother's, he was bom 
in Kansas and brought at an early age into Illinois. After 
one year at college he began to prepare himself for the 
practice of law by studying in his father's law office at 
Lewiston, Illinois, and then moved to Chicago to improve 
his fortunes. He confessed that the music of Bums and 
Shelley kept running through his brain, and he could not 
resist the impulse to write poetry. In fact, he wrote several 
hundreds of poems in the ordinary verse forms before he 
came to write in the new form known as free-verse. He 
felt that he needed some new medium in which to present 
the dead monotony and crass realism of Middle Western 
village life. He makes Petit, the Spoon River poet, confess 
that he saw 

Life all around me here in the village: 

Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth. 

Courage, constancy, heroism, failure — 

Ail in the loom, and oh what patterns ! 



144 History of American Literature 

and that he (Petit) had been utterly unable to express it in 
the conventional verse forms, 

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, 
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, 
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines? 

It was perhaps in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse, which was 
founded at Chicago in igi i, that Mr. Masters discovered the 
new vers lihre, or free-verse, and he recognized at once 
that it was exactly the medium he was in need of. William 
Marion Reedy, of St. Louis, urged him to throw off all 
conventions and write something strictly American in form 
and content, and Mr. Masters began to strike off and 
publish in Reedy s Mirror (St. Louis) those brilliant char- 
acter sketches for which he has since become famous. In 
19 1 5 he collected these unique poems under the title of The 
Spoon River Anthology. It is perhaps not too much to say 
that the book created a sensation in literary circles. No 
book of poetry since Longfellow's Voices of the Night has 
had so wide a circulation, and none since Walt Whitman's 
Leaves of Grass has been more vigorously stimulating or 
shown more originality. Everybody who was at all inter- 
ested in literature read The Spoon River Anthology and 
talked about it. Spoon River is the fictitious name of a 
Middle Western town, and the Anthology is supposed to 
be a collection of epitaphs written upon the lives of the 
inhabitants who lie buried in the cemetery. In most 
instances the dead persons are supposed to speak the real 
truth about themselves, and thus the author is permitted 
to reveal the inner secrets of the whole fabric of life about 
him. Not only are the individuals portrayed in bold outline 
and crass realism, but the life of the whole village is gradu- 
ally reproduced and clearly revealed. There are a few family 
groups and related portraits, and there is frequent allusion 
reaching over from one portrait to another; and when all 
of the more than two hundred persons are before us, we 
suddenly realize that we have a complete cross section of 
society as it exists in this Middle Western town of Spoon 
River. There is no story, no hero, no heroine, no major 
characters and minor characters, but just the unvarnished 
truth about each member of the village society; and lo, 
when we have read all the epitaphs, we have a picture of 
the whole village before us. There has been some objection 




EDGAR LEE MASTERS 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 145 

to the book because in it Mr. Masters seems to paint too 
dark a picture. He reveals the ugly side of American life 
in all its coarseness, sensuality, sordidness, and hypocrisy. 
He seems to over-emphasize the bad and to say too little 
about the good. There is truth in his realistic presentation, 
to be sure, but there is another and a better side to human 
nature, and those who will read on to the end of The Spoon 
River Anthology will find that Mr. Masters realizes this. 
Toward the close of his book particularly he portrays an 
unselfish idealism and a genuine belief in the essential 
purity and aspiration of American life and human nature 
at large. He is often frank even to vulgarity and brutality, 
but underlying all his apparent cynicism is a spirit of hopeful 
optimism and sincere sympathy. On the whole The Spoon 
River Anthology is perhaps composed of too strong meat 
for young readers, but now and then a pure heart speaks 
in sincere accents that young readers will enjoy. Take 
the following picture of the old maid school teacher, supposed 
to be modeled on Mr. Master's own early teacher: 

EMILY SPARKS 

Where is my boy, my boy — 

In what far part of the world? 

The boy I loved best of all in the school? — 

I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart. 

Who made them all my children. 

Did I know my boy aright. 

Thinking of him as spirit aflame, 

Active, ever aspiring? 

Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed 

In many a watchful hour at night, 

Do you remember the letter I wrote you 

Of the beautiful love of Christ? 

And whether you ever took it or not, 

My boy, wherever you are, 

Work for your soul's sake, 

That all the clay of you, all of the dross of you, 

May yield to the fire of you. 

Till the fire is nothing but light! 

Nothing but Hght! 

And "Reuben Pantier" answers, beginning his story thus: 



146 History of American Literature 

Well, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted. 

Your love was not all in vain. 

I owe whatever I was in life 

To your hope that would not give me up. 

To your love that saw me still as good. 

In his latest books, The Great Valley (19 17), and Toward the 
Gulf (19 18), Mr. Masters has attempted, with a large meas- 
ure of success, to do for the Central West, that is, "the great 
valley" of the Mississippi as it sweeps "toward the Gulf," 
what he did for a single town of this same section in The 
Spoon River Anthology. He has drunk deeply of the pure 
stream of democracy as it flowed through Abraham Lincoln 
and Walt Whitman, and as a result his work may be called 
a "true epic of American life." 

Carl Sandburg. Sidney Lanier once spoke of Walt 
Whitman as poetry's butcher who served up whole collops, 
raw and bloody, gristle and bone and all. The figure might 
be aptly applied to Carl Sandburg (1878-). He was born 
of Swedish ancestry in Galesburg, Illinois, and has had a 
varied experience in many parts of the West, working at 
many jobs and being thrown intimately with many sorts 
of toilers. He succeeded in getting a fairly good education, 
and he has been connected with several of the more recent 
socialistic movements in Wisconsin and other states. He 
is the poet of Chicago in particular, just as Walt Whitman 
was of Mannahatta, or New York. He is also the poet of 
social democracy. His volume called Chicago Poems (19 16) 
is his chief contribution thus far to the so-called new poetry 
in the free-verse forms. The opening poem in this volume, 
"Chicago," is his best known single production. This 
poem was first printed in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse, in 
1 914, and was awarded a prize of $200 as the best American 
poem of the year. Its opening lines will remind the student 
at once of Walt Whitman, but there is something new and 
fresh here also; the selection will also afford some idea of 
Mr. Sandburg's terrific strength and imaginative power: 

CHICAGO 
Hog Butcher for the World, 
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, 

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; 
Stormy, husky, brawling, 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 147 

City of the big shoulders : 

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your 

painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. 
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have 

seen the gunmen kill and go free to kill again. 
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of 

women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. 
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this 

my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: 
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be 

alive and coarse and strong and cunning. 
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a 

tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; 
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage 
pitted against the wilderness. 
Bareheaded, 
Shoveling, 
Wrecking, 
Planning, 

Building, breaking, rebuilding, 
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, 
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs. 
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle. 
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his 
ribs the heart of the people. 
Laughing! 
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, 
sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of 
Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation. 

Vachel Lindsay. Another strikingly unconventional 
Western poet is Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-), who 
was born in Springfield, Illinois, educated in the high school 
there and at Hiram College in Ohio, and later studied art 
at the Chicago Art Institute and the New York School of 
Art. After doing some lecturing in the interests of the 
Anti-Saloon League for the Y. M. C. A. settlement work in 
New York, he returned to Illinois and spent a year or two 
lecturing in the interests of the Anti-Saloon League. Then 
in 1909 he began his famous tramp from Illinois to New 
Mexico, preaching, as he said, "the gospel of beauty" along 
the way. He sold copies of his own verses. Rhymes to be 
Traded for Bread (191 2), and recited them wherever he could 



148 History of American Literature 

gather an audience. Later he recorded his experiences 
in a prose volume interspersed with poems, calling it Adven- 
tures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (1914). He 
repeated this experiment in other tramping excursions. 
Lindsay first attracted wide attention by his poem called 
"General William Booth Enters Heaven" which appeared 
in Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, January, 19 13, and was 
published in a volume with other poems in 19 14. His 
second volume of poetry, The Congo and Other Poems, was 
published in 191 5. He attempts to interpret American life, 
particularly in the great cities and in the rural sections of 
the Middle West, from the point of view of the average 
citizen rather than from that of the educated critic. Poems 
like "The Congo," representing negro life, "The Fireman's 
Ball," and "A Rhyme about an Electrical Advertising 
Sign" come out of his experiences in the cities, while "The 
Santa Fe Trail" and "An Indian Summer Day on the 
Prairie" are the product of his tramps in the West. The 
most striking peculiarity of Lindsay's poems is his marginal 
glosses or notes, in which he tells the reader exactly how to 
read or recite the verses, for he believes poetry for the 
people should be recited rather than merely silently read. 
He conceives his setting exactly as a dramatist would do, 
and gives full elocutionary or stage directions to accompany 
the oral rendition. He is wonderfully successful in reciting 
his own productions, and of course he wants others to read 
his poems exactly as he has conceived them. Besides the 
work already mentioned, Lindsay has written some good 
rehgious lyrics, such as "I Heard Immanuel Singing," and 
some quaint children's poems. Perhaps Lindsay will be 
remembered chiefly as an oddity or freak in the modern 
poetical movement, but there is no use denying the fact that 
he is possessed of an unusual imagination, and that he has 
done some rather unique things in recitative verse forms. 

WESTERN ■ WRITERS OF FICTION 

The fiction writers classified. There are so many popular 
and promising Western novelists and short-story writers 
that it will be necessary to select just a few of them as 
typical. Mark Twain and Bret Harte^ have been chosen 
for fuller treatment in Part H of this book. After these 



1 See Part II, pp. 469, 484. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 149 

we may take General Lew Wallace, Edward Eggleston, 
Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, and Winston Churchill for 
paragraph treatment, and content ourselves with a bare 
catalogue of the other novelists and story writers, together 
with a few of their most noteworthy productions. 

Lew Wallace. General Lew Wallace (1827-1905), of 
Indiana, first earned fame as a soldier taking part in both 
the War with Mexico and the Civil War, where he finally rose 
to the rank of general. Just before the outbreak of the War 
with Mexico, while he was studying for admission to the bar 
at Indianapolis, Wallace read Prescott's Conquest of Mexico 
and was at once fired with the ambition to write a historical 
novel based on the romantic background of the Spanish con- 
quest of the Aztecs. Later his own personal experiences in 
Mexico added to his equipment for the task, but it was not 
until long after the Civil War that he finally finished his first 
novel. The Fair God, a Tale of the Conquest of Mexico (1873). 
This book, though fairly well planned and executed, attracted 
but little attention until after the appearance of its author's 
amazingly popular religious romance, Ben Hur, a Tale of 
the Christ (1880). This last is said to have been the most 
widely read novel that had appeared since Uncle Tom's 
Cabin (1852) swept the country. It had in it much to 
commend it to the American public: It was . thoroughly 
reverent and orthodox in its attitude toward the Christ; 
it was enthusiastically, vividly, and dramatically written; 
and it satisfied all the demands for an intensely exciting 
romance as well as for historical information and moral 
stimulus. Critics have spoken in a somewhat slighting tone 
of the lack of artistic merit in style and structure, of the 
melodramatic atmosphere, and of the pietistic or moral 
leanings of the book, but such criticism has had little effect 
in deterring thousands of eager readers from turning again 
and again to the pages of the romance and other thousands 
of pleased spectators from attending the elaborate dram- 
atizations of the novel. The Prince of India, or Why 
Constantinople Fell (1893), did not satisfy the public so well 
as Ben Hur had done. In none of his novels does General 
Wallace represent American life. He had a penchant for 
foreign historical themes with a large romantic background, 
and it must be said that he was hardly possessed of sufficient 
imaginative power to fuse these historical and romantic 



ISO History of American Literature 

elements into really great masterpieces. His position as 
a writer, then, cannot finally be a high' one, but he deserves 
remembrance as one of the many American novelists who 
attracted very wide interest with their popular historical 
romances in the last decades of the nineteenth century. 

Edward Eggleston. Edward Eggleston (183 7-1902) will 
probably be remembered more for his accurate portrayal 
of life in the Middle West, particularly in Indiana and 
Minnesota, than for his purely literary excellence. A 
descendant of a good Virginia family, he was born in Indiana, 
was shifted about from place to place after the early death of 
his parents, entered the Methodist ministry as a circuit 
rider when he was nineteen, and gradually educated himself 
by his voracious habit of reading history, biography, and 
general literature. During all his early life he studied at 
first hand the Hoosier customs and types of character which 
he was to use so effectively in his later realistic novels. 
The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871), first published serially in 
the Hearth and Home, was widely read. It is not a strong 
book when examined from a purely artistic view point, 
but because of its humor, its coarse realism, and its sincere 
humanity and large charity, it is irresistibly appealing and 
universally popular, particularly among young readers. 
Another book in the same vein is The Hoosier Schoolboy 
(1883). The End of the World, a Love Story (1872) is centered 
around the sect of "Millerites," who taught, about 1870, 
that the end of the world was at hand. The scene of The 
Mystery of Metropolisville (1873) is laid in Minnesota, and 
is the result of the author's observations of life in that state 
during the several years of his residence there. The Cir- 
cuit Rider, a Tale of the Heroic Age (1874), deals with the 
history of Methodism in the Middle West in the first quarter 
of the nineteenth century. This book is looked upon 
almost as an authentic historic document, so close to fact 
as revealed by history and by his own personal experiences 
in later years has the novelist been. In this book Eggles- 
ton reached his highest power. He has portrayed the early 
life in the West with a vividness that makes it very real to 
his readers, and he has thus preserved for us the true historic 
background out of which came such characters as Presidents 
William Henry Harrison and Abraham Lincoln. In one of 
Eggleston 's later works. The Gray sons, a Story of Illinois 



^* Artistic or Creative Period" 151 

(1888), a realistic picture of pioneer life, Abraham Lincoln 
actually appears as one of the characters. During his 
later years Eggleston became a. writer of popular histories, 
and he was also connected editorially with several religious 
and literary journals, notably the New York Independent 

Hamlin Garland. In Hamlin Garland (i860-) we find 
the hard realism of the Middle West farm life voicing itself. 
He knows his background thoroughly,- and he portrays it 
vividly. The offspring of parents who had the regular 
Western fever for migrating, he was bom in Wisconsin 
and carried along with the family in their wanderings from 
point to point until they settled somewhat more permanently 
in Iowa. He managed to acquire a fairly good education, 
taught school in several Western states, and later in Massa- 
chusetts. Finally he turned his hand to writing Western 
stories and collected them later in Main-Traveled Roads: 
Six Mississippi Valley Stories (1891) and Prairie Folks: 
or Pioneer Life on the Western Prairies in Nine Stories (1892). 
He says the entire series was the result of a svmimer vacation 
visit to his old home in Iowa, to his father's farm in Dakota, 
and to his birthplace in Wisconsin. At the time he made 
this visit he was living in Boston, and he confesses that the 
return to the scenes of his boyhood started him upon a 
series of stories delineative of farm and village life as he knew 
it and had lived it. Thus these stories become a sort of 
historical transcript of Garland's own experiences, and as 
such they are not only interesting narratives, but rarely 
true and human presentations of Western farm life in the 
later decades of the nineteenth century. Mr. Garland has 
written many longer Stories also, but none of them is quite 
so good in its interpretation of Western life as are his short 
stories. Rose of Butcher's Coolly (1895) and The Eagle's 
Heart (1900) may be mentioned as typical Western novels. 
One of the most valuable of all Mr. Garland's books is his 
autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border (19 17). It gives 
a truthful and satisfying picture of life in the Midlde and 
Far West, of the whole of America in fact, and at the same 
time it is as entertaining as a novel. It is, indeed, a real 
human document that every American who desires to under- 
stand his own country should read. 

Frank Norris. Frank Norris (i 870-1 902) represents more 
particularly the Far West, but he is also frequently associated 



152 History of American Literature 

with the Middle West. He was born in Chicago, educated in 
San Francisco High School and the University of California, 
studied at Harvard, and then went abroad to study art at 
Paris. Later he became special correspondent and editor 
of San Francisco papers, and during the Spanish- American 
War he did some special magazine work. He then made 
himself famous as the author of fiction of the most blatantly 
realistic type. He held the extreme view that the novelist 
should tell the truth, the real truth, and nothing but the 
truth, no matter how revolting it might be. McTeague: 
A Story of San Francisco (1899) illustrates this strong type 
of realism. But Norris's greatest effort was in the three 
, novels which he planned to be what he called "an epic of the 
wheat." These novels when completed were intended to 
portray the real facts about the complex industrial and 
social life of America as it revolved around the most impor- 
tant food product of the world. Norris explained his purpose 
in the preface to the second novel. He said, "These novels, 
while forming a series, will be in no way connected with 
each other save by their relation to (i) the production, 
(2) the distribution, (3) the consumption of American wheat. 
When complete they will form the story of a crop of wheat 
from the time of its sowing as seed in California to the time 
of its consumption as bread in a village of Western Europe." 
The novelist completed only The Octopus, a Story of Cali- 
fornia (1901) and The Pit, a Story of Chicago (1902). The 
third novel he intended to call The Wolf, proposing to make 
the main incident center about a famine in some European 
community. The Octopus is really an allegory dealing with 
the railroad trust, which, like a giant octopus, the author 
conceives to have its tentacles stretched everywhere over 
the land. He describes it as "the leviathan with tentacles 
of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron- 
hearted Power, the Monster, the Colossus, the Octopus." 
The Pit is the story of a speculation or corner in the Chicago 
wheat exchange. These two stories are powerfully written, 
and had Norris lived to complete the trilogy, he would 
undoubtedly have rounded out his plan so as to have made 
this sequence one of the most remarkably comprehensive 
works of modern fiction. Even as it stands his effort has 
a magnificent sweep and a fundamental and powerful art 
appeal. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 153 

Winston Churchill. It is difficult to decide whether 
Winston Spencer Churchill (187 1-) should be classed with 
the Western or the New England group of novelists. He 
was bom in St. Louis, Missouri, educated at an academy 
in that city and at the United States Naval Academy at 
Annapolis, spent several years in general journalistic work 
in New York, and finally settled permanently in the artists' 
colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, just across the Con- 
necticut river from the town of Windsor, Vermont. Later 
he entered politics in New Hampshire and became thoroughly 
identified with this state. The scenes of some of his novels 
are laid in the West, but the political and social problem 
novels of his recent years deal mainly with conditions in the 
East. All his work, however, is more or less general and 
national rather than local in character, and on the whole 
he seens to belong with the group of Western writers who 
have attempted to express in their novels the broad national 
or democratic ideal known as Americanism. His three 
important historical novels are Richard Carvel (1899), the 
scene of which is laid principally in Maryland during the 
whole of the Revolutionary period; The Crisis (1901), 
which opens in St. Louis just before the Civil War and 
covers the whole of that critical period in our history, intro- 
ducing Abraham Lincoln in a rather large way; and The 
Crossing (1904), a picturesque narrative of "the crossing of 
the Alleghanies" by the early pioneers, such as Daniel 
Boone and his companions, the development of the move- 
ment for westward expansion through the Louisiana purchase, 
and the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark, Of 
his other works two are political novels dealing with 
conditions in New Hampshire, Coniston (1906), portraying 
the career of Jethro Bass, a typical political boss during 
the administration of President Grant, and Mr. Crewe's 
Career (1908), a continuation of the same theme, a search- 
ing satire on railroad domination of state politics ; two others 
are American social studies, turning largely on marriage 
and business problems, A Modern Chronicle (19 10), a love 
story opening in St. Louis and moving in a circle through 
New York and Virginia back to the starting point, and A 
Far Country (19 15), a highly generalized study of the rise 
of big business methods toward the end of the nineteenth 
"century; and one. The Inside of the Cup (19 13), deals in a 
rather frank and startling way with the inner social workings 



154 History of American Literature 

of a rich twentieth-century American church. It will be 
observed that each of these novels takes up some big theme, 
and it will be found that the treatment is broad and epical 
in character rather than narrow and personal. An attempt 
is made to portray primarily some great historical, political, 
or social problem, and the characters and personal narrative 
are made to elucidate the theme. The characters are well 
drawn and peculiarly attractive as human beings, it is true, 
and the reader becomes intensely interested in their fortunes 
as the story progresses; but they seem to be merely a part 
of the greater social or national movement which the author 
portrays as sweeping them on or engulfing them in its 
stream. The first three of Churchill's novels have been 
called historical, but in truth all his books may be called 
historical or interpretive of American life in a chronological 
sequence from the Revolution to present times. These 
eight novels are all well worth reading, for Churchill is a 
careful and painstaking workman both in the collecting and 
marshaling of his facts and in his literary style. Perhaps 
younger readers should be content for th^ present to take 
up the three earlier novels in their chronological order — 
Richard Carvel, The Crossing, The Crisis. The first and 
last of these are connected by the interesting device of 
making the heroine of the last, Virginia Carvel, to appear 
as the great-great-granddaughter of the hero of the first. 

Western women story writers. Among the women 
novelists of the West, the following are the most notable. 
Helen Hunt Jackson (1831-1885,)^ poet and novelist, author 
of Ramona (1884), a strong story intended to arouse sympathy 
for the mistreated Indian as Uncle Tom's Cabin had pre- 
viously done for the Southern negro; Mrs. Mary Hartwell 
Catherwood (1847-1902), of Ohio, writer of romantic stories 
of Indian life in the earlier period of French settlements in 
Canada and the Middle West, such as The Romance of 
Bollard (1889), Old Kaskaskia (1893), Lazarre (1901); 
Mary Hallock Foote (1847-), writer of stories dealing with 
primitive life in the West, such as The Led Horse Claim 
(1883), Coeur d'Alene (1894); Octave Thanet (real name 
Alice French) (1850-), author of sympathetic and artistic 



iMiss Helen Maria Fiske, born in Amherst, Massachusetts, was first 
married to Captain Hunt and frequently signed her early works "H. H." 
She later married a Mr. Jackson of Colorado. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 155 

short stories revealing life in Iowa and Arkansas, as in 
Knitters in the Sun (1887), Stories of a Western Town (1893) ; 
The Heart of Toil (1898); Gertrude Atherton (1857-), of 
San Francisco, writer of novels dealing with life in the 
West, such as The Californians (1898), and also with general 
social and political life in the East, as in Patience Spar- 
hawk (1897) and Senator North (1900), treating respectively 
of New York and Washington society, and The Conquerer 
(1902), a historical romance with Alexander Hamilton 
as the chief figure; and Kathleen Norris (1880-), of San 
Francisco, writer of realistic novels of presentday social 
life, stich as Mother (191 1) and The Heart of Rachael (19 16). 

Other Western novelists. The popular Western noveHsts 
include Maurice Thompson (1844-1901), of Indiana, poet, 
essayist, and novelist, author of Alice of Old Vincennes 
(1901), a stirring tale of Revolutionary times and one of the 
most widely read novels of its decade; Henry Blake Fuller 
(1857-), of Chicago, author of realistic presentday studies 
in city life, as in The Cliff Dwellers (1893), With the Proces- 
sion (1895); Frederic Remington (1861-1909), painter of 
Western pictures and writer of Western short stories, as 
in Crooked Trails (1898), Men with the Bark On (1900); 
WilHam Allen White (1868-), of Kansas, author of The 
Court of Boyville (1899), a sequence of delightfully human 
and playfully humorous stories of boy life in the Middle 
West, and A Certain Rich Man (1909), a novel dealing with 
the rapid growth of a Western town and the making of a 
modem millionaire; Robert Herrick (1868-), a professor in 
the University of Chicago, author of many searching and 
somewhat pessimistic studies in social life, particularly on 
the marriage problem, such as The Common Lot (1904), 
Together (1908); Steward Edward White (1873-), of Mich- 
igan, portrayer of Western mining and mountaineer types, 
as in The Claim fumpers (1901), The Blazed Trail (1902); 
Jack London (1876-1916), of San Francisco, writer of 
realistic stories of outdoor adventure and animal life, as in 
The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), White 
Fang (1907); and Newton Booth Tarkington (1869-), of 
Indiana, one of the best of the modern popular novelists, 
author of The Gentleman from Indiana (1899), a study of 
Hoosier character; Monsieur Beaucaire (1900) a romantic 
story laid in England a century or more ago; The Two 



156 History of American Literature 

Vanrevels (1902), a story of mistaken identity, the scene 
being laid in the Middle West of the mid-nineteenth century ; 
Cherry (1903), a sprightly Revolutionary romance; The 
Turmoil (19 15), his most ambitious work, a searching study 
of modem business methods in a big city; Penrod (19 14) 
and Penrod and Sam (19 16), short stories presenting a live 
American boy of twelve with his companions ; and Seventeen 
(19 16), a delightful picture of an American youth at the 
impressionable age of seventeen. 

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES SUITABLE FOR HIGH- 
SCHOOL LIBRARIES AND OUTSIDE READING 

General Reference Books for Nineteenth Century 
American Literature 

(For General References see end of Part I, p. 33.) 
I. History and General Criticism 

Baker, Guide to Best Fiction, Macmillan, N. Y., 1903. 
Baskervill, Southern Writers, 2 vols., Nashville, 1902, 191 1. 

*Blount, Intensive Studies in American Literature, Macmillan, N. Y., 

1914. 
BowEN, Makers of American Literature, Neale, Richmond, 1908. 

*Brownell, American Prose Masters, Scribners, N. Y., 1909 (includes 
Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell, James). 

Burton, Literary Leaders of America, Scribners, N. Y., 1904. 

*Canby, The Short Story in English, Holt, N. Y., 1909. 

Collins, Studies in Poetry and Criticism, Macmillan, N. Y., 1905. 

Cooper, Some American Story-Tellers, Holt, N. Y., 191 1. 

*Erskine, Leading American Novelists, Holt, N. Y., 1910 (includes 
Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, Simms, Stowe, Harte). 

FoTHERiNGHAM, Transcendentalism in New England, 

Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism, Lemcke and 
Buechner, 1908. 

Hale, James Russell Lowell and his Friends, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 

1899. 
HiGGiNSON, Contemporaries, Houghton Aiifflin, Boston, 1899. 
HoLLiDAY, A History of Southern Literature, Neale, 1902. 



♦These volumes are especially valuable for high-school libraries. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 157 

Howe, American Bookmen, Dodd, Mead, N. Y., 1898. 

'How RIA.S* Literary Friends and Acquaintance, Harpers, N. Y., 1900, 
*My Literary Passions, Harpers, N. Y., 1895, 
*Criticism and Fiction, Harpers, N. Y., 1891. 

Lawton, The New England Poets, Macmillan, N. Y., 1898. 

*LowELL, Amy, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, Macmillan, 
N. Y., 1917. 

Moses, The Literature of the South, Crowell, N. Y., 1910. 
The American Dramatists, Little, Brown, N. Y., 191 1. 

Onderdonk, History of American Verse {i6io-i8g7), McClurg, Chicago, 
1901. 

*Pattee, History of American Literature Since i8yo. Century, N. Y., 
1915- 

Payne, W. M., Leading American Essayists, Holt, N. Y., 1910. 
American Literary Criticism, Longmans, N. Y., 1904. 

Sladen, Younger American Poets {1830-1890), Cassell, N. Y., 1891. 

*Stedman, Poets of America, Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1899. 

Strong, American Poets and their Theology, American Baptist Pub. 
Soc, Phil., 1916. 

Swift, Brook Farm, Macmillan, N. Y., 1900, 

Literary Landmarks of Boston, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1903. 

Vedder, American Writers of Today, Silver, N. Y., 1910. 

*ViNCENT, American Literary Masters, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1906. 

Whiting, Boston and Concord, Little, Brown, N. Y., 191 1. 

Winter, Old Friends (Literary Recollections), Moflfatt, N. Y., 1909. 
For additional references on the major writers see the notes at the end 
of biographical sketches Part II of the book. 



2. Anthologies and Selections 

*Stedman and Hutchinson, Library of American Literature, vols. V 
to XL See p. 000. 

*Alderman, Harris, and Kent, Library of Southern Literature, 16 vols., 
Martin & Hoyt, Atlanta, 1907-1913. Contains biographical and 
critical essays and selections. 

*BoYNTON, American Poetry, Scribners, N. Y., 1918. 

Bronson, * American Poems, University of Chicago Press, 19 12. 
* American Prose, University of Chicago Press, 19 16. 

*Page, Chief American Poets, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1905. 

Newcomer, Andrews and Hall, Three Centuries of American Poetry 
and Prose, Scott, Foresman, Chicago, 1917. 



158 History oj American Literature 

Calhoun and McAlarney, Readings from American Literature, Ginn, 
Boston, 1915. 

Carpenter, Selections from American Prose, Macmillan, N. Y., 

Trent, Southern Writers, Macmillan, N. Y., 1905 (contains selections 
with brief biographical and critical sketches). 

RiTTENHOUSE, The Little Book of American Poets {lySj-igoo), 
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1915. 
*The Little Book of Modern Poets, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. 

*MoNROE and Henderson, The New Poetry, An Anthology, Macmillan, 
N. Y., 191 7 (contains selections from more than 100 modern poets, 
English and American). 

*QuiNN, Representative American Plays, Century, N. Y., 19 17. 
J. A Few Novels Dealing ivith Different Periods 

Before the Civil War: 

Eggleston, The Circuit Rider (Methodism in early Indiana), 
Roxy (Tippecanoe Campaign in Indiana). 

Churchill, The Crossing (Rogers and Clark Expedition, etc.) 
Post, Smith Brunt: A Story of the Old Navy (War of 1812). 
Pyle, Within the Capes: A Sea Story (War of 1812). 
MuNROE, With Crockett and Bowie (Texas about 1835); 

Through Swamp and Glade (Florida during Seminole War). 
Atherton, Before the Gringo Came (Early California life) ; 

Los Cerritos, (Southern California). 
Barr, Remember the Alamo (Texas Independence). 
Eggleston, The Hoosier Schoolmaster, (Indiana about 1840). 
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (Slavery Question about 1850). 

Civil War: 

Benson, Who Goes There? 

Churchill, The Crisis. 

Cable, The Cavalier. 

Cooke, Hilt to Hilt, Surrey of Eagle's Nest, Mohun, etc. 

Crane, The Red Badge of Courage. 

Frederic, The Copperhead and Other Northern Stories. 

Glasgow, The Battle-Ground. 

Johnston, The Long Roll, Cease Firing. 

Harris, Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and in War, On the Wing of 
Occasion. 

Henty, With Lee in Virginia. 



"Artistic or Creative Period" 159 

Page, The Burial of the Guns, etc. 

Oldham, The Man From Texas. 

Trowbridge, The Three Scouts, The Drummer Boy, etc. 

Since the Civil War: Reconstruction and Development of the West 

Cable, John March, Southerner. 

Page, Red Rock. 

Seawell, Thorckmorton. 

Jackson, Ramona ( Indian Question). 

Overton, The Heritage of Unrest (Indians in New Mexico). 

WiSTER, The Virginian (Wyoming). 

White, The Westerners, The Blazed Trail, etc. 

Mark Twain, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi; Tom Sawyer, 
Huckleberry Finn, Pudd'n-Head Wilson, etc. 



PART II 
INTRODUCTORY HISTORY 
OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



TO HER 

Through whose self-sacrifice and encourage- 
ment all my books have been 
made possible 



THE CONTENTS 

The figures in parentheses indicate the pages on which the Notes will be found. 

PAGE 

The Preface xi 

The Introduction xiii 

I. New York and Middle Atlantic Group 

1. WASHINGTON IRVING — 

1. Portrait {faci?ig) I 

2. Biographical Sketch i 

3. Rip Van Winkle (525) 7 

4. Westminster Abbey (529) 26 

2. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER — 

1. Portrait (facing) 38 

2. Biographical Sketch 38 

3. The Last of the Mohicans (Chapter III, Hawk-eye, 

Chingachgook, and Uncas) (53?) 46 

3. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT — 

1. Portrait (facing) 56 

2. Biographical Sketch 56 

3. Thanatopsis (534) 62 

4. To a Waterfowl (536) 64 

5. The Death of the Flowers (537) 65 

6. Robert of Lincoln (538) 67 

4. WALT WHITMAN — 

1. Portrait (facing) 7° 

2. Biographical Sketch 70 

3. Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (539) ... 80 

4. When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (540) . 87 

5. O Captain! My Captain! (544) 96 

6. The Mystic Trumpeter (544) 97 

II. New England Group 

5. RALPH WALDO EMERSON — 

I. Portrait (/acmg) lOl 



Biographical Sketch loi 

Heroism (545) 106 

Compensation (549) Il8 

Concord Hymn (553) 139 

The Rhodora (554) 140 

The Humble-Bee (555) 140 

Days (555) 142 



viii American Literary Readings 

6. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE— page 

1. Portrait (facing) 143 

2. Biographical Sketch 143 

3. The Ambitious Guest (556) 149 

4. The Great Carbuncle (558) 158 

5. The Wedding-Knell (560) 174 

7. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW — 

Portrait (facing) 184 

Biographical Sketch 184 

Evangeline (561) 190 

A Psalm of Life (576) 256 

Hymn to the Night (577) . 257 

Maidenhood (578) 258 

Excelsior (578) 260 

The Wreck of the Hesperus (579) 262 

The Arrow and the Song (581) 265 

Divina Commedia (581) 265 



8. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER — 

1. Portrait (facing) 266 

2. Biographical Sketch 266 

3. Snow-Bound (582) 272 

4. Ichabod (588) 294 

5. Skipper Ireson's Ride (589) 296 

6. In School-Days (590) 299 

9. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES — 

1. Portrait (facing) 301 

2. Biographical Sketch 301 

3. The Last Leaf (591) 307 

4. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Section IV, 

including "The Chambered Nautilus") (592) . . 308 

5. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Section XI, 

including "The Deacon's Masterpiece") (595) . . 3^9 

10. HENRY DAVID THOREAU — 

1. Portrait (facing) 325 

2. Biographical Sketch 325 

3. Brute Neighbors (Chapter XII of Walden, or Life in 

the Woods) (596) 331 

11. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL — 

1. Portrait (facing) 344 

2. Biographical Sketch 344 

3. The Vision of Sir Launfal (599) 349 

4. The Courtin' (605) 360 

5. A Fable for Critics (excerpts) (606) 363 

6. Our Literature (609) 372 



The Contents ix 
III. Southern Group 

12. EDGAR ALLAN POE — page 

1. Portrait (facing) 377 

2. Biographical Sketch 377 

3. Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales (610) . . 382 

4. The Cask of Amontillado (611) 390 

5. The Purloined Letter (612) 398 

6. To Science (614) 419 

7. To Helen (615) ' . 419 

8. Israfel (616) 420 

9. Ulalume (617) 422 

ID. Eldorado (618) 425 

13. HENRY TIMROD — 

1. Portrait (facing) 426 

2. Biographical Sketch 426 

3. Spring (619) 430 

4. Ode (620) 432 

14. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE — 

1. Portrait (facing) 434 

2. Biographical Sketch 434 

3. Aspects of the Pines (621) 436 

4. Composed in Autumn (622) 437 

15. SIDNEY LANIER — 

1. Portrait (facing) 438 

2. Biographical Sketch 438 

3. Song of the Chattahoochee (622) 443 

16. O. HENRY — 

1. Portrait (facing) 445 

2. Biographical Sketch 445 

3. The Ransom of Red Chief (623) 448 

4. The Last Leaf (624) 460 

IV. Central and Western Group 

17. ABRAHAM LINCOLN — 

1. Portrait (facing) 467 

2. Biographical Sketch 467 

3. Gettysburg Address (625) 468 

18. MARK TWAIN 

1. Portrait (facing) 469 

2. Biographical Sketch 469 

3. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County 

(626) 477 



X American Literary Readings 

19. BRET HARTE— page 

1. Portrait {facing) 484 

2. Biographical Sketch 484 

3. The Luck of Roaring Camp (628) 486 

20. JOAQUIN MILLER — 

1 . Portrait {facing) . . . . ' 499 

2. Biographical Sketch 499 

3.- Kit Carson's Ride (629) 502 

4. Columbus (630) 505 

21. EUGENE FIELD — 

1. Portrait {facing) 507 

2. Biographical Sketch 507 

3. In the Firelight (630) 509 

4. Dutch Lullaby (631) 510 

22. JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY — 

1. Portrait {facing) 512 

2. Biographical Sketch 512 

3. Afterwhiles (631) 5^4 

4. The Raggedy Man (632) 516 

23. WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY— 

1. Portrait {facing) 5^9 

2. Biographical Sketch 519 

3. Gloucester Moors (632) 522 

The Notes 525 

A Pronouncing List of Proper Names 634 

An Outline of American Literature 638 

A Brief Essay on English Metrics 642 



THE PREFACE 

This volume is iiitended to be used as a basal text in 
classes in American literature. An effort has been made 
to include all the major authors and some of the more im- 
portant minor ones, and to give enough material to be fairly- 
representative of the different types of work produced by 
each of these. No selection from authors whose works are 
now merely of historic or antiquarian interest has been 
included. The absolutely essential classics have been chosen 
as far as length and character of the selection would permit. 
The apparent unequal representation in the cases of recent 
writers, particularly Lanier, Mark Twain, and Moody, is 
due to copyright restrictions. An effort has been made 
also to conform to the standard texts, but in most instances 
the original texts were followed. In practically every case, 
complete works have been given, the exceptions being the 
chapters from Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans and 
Thoreau's Walden and the sections from Lowell's A Fable 
for Critics and Holmes's The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
and in these instances enough is extracted to make a unified 
effect and to arouse interest in the complete work. 

The plan of the present book is largely the same as that of 
Charles M. Curry's Literary Readings and the present editor's 
Southern Literary Readings, both published by Rand McNally 
& Company. The biographical sketches and the notes 
and questions are made full enough to elucidate the text, 
pique interest, and stimulate thought, but not too full, it 
is hoped, to overshadow the literature itself or prevent 
outside study and reference work on the part of the pupil. 

My thanks are due to the courteous cooperation of the 
members of the reading-room staff in the Library of Congress, 
where the notes and sketches were prepared. I also wish 
to express my gratitude to the publishing houses which have 
given me permission to reprint certain copyrighted material : 
To Charles Scribner's Sons for "Song of the Chattahoo- 
chee," from Poems of Lanier by Sidney Lanier, and "Dutch 
Lullaby" and "In the Firelight" by Eugene Field; The 
Bobbs-Merrill Company for " Af terwhiles " and "The 

[xij 



xii The Preface 

Raggedy Man" by James Whitcomb Riley; Doubleday 
Page & Company for "The Ransom of Red Chief," from 
Whirligigs, and "The Last Leaf," from The Trimmed Lamp 
and Other Stories of the Four Million, by O. Henry; the 
Whittaker & Ray-Wiggin Company for "Kit Carson's Ride" 
and ' ' Columbus ' ' by Joaquin Miller. 

"The Luck of Roaring Camp" by Bret Harte, "Divina 
Commedia" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and "Glou- 
cester Moors" by William Vaughn Moody, are used by 
permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton 
Mifflin Company, Boston. 

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," "When Lilacs 
Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," "O Captain! My Captain!" 
and "The Mystic Trumpeter" by Walt Whitman are used 
by permission of Horace K. Traubel, literary executor. 

I am also indebted to Mrs. Mary Day Lanier for help in 
revising the sketch of Sidney Lanier, reprinted here from 
my Southern Literary Readings. 

L. W. Payne, Jr. 

Austin, Texas 
January, igij 



THE INTRODUCTION 

I. The Aim of Literary Study 

The tendency to reduce the study of the history of litera- 
ture to a subordinate place and to exalt the study of the 
classics themselves has become in recent years more and 
more pronounced. Secondary textbooks are now com- 
bining the history with the selections, but with the emphasis 
largely upon the latter. This is certainly a development in 
the right direction, for it is vastly more important for the 
high-school pupils to be reading the literature itself than 
to be committing to memory numerous facts about the 
writers and their books. Of course, a modicum of literary 
history is necessary, especially for studying tendencies^ and 
movements and for making estimates of particular ' pro- 
ductions and authors; the historical backgrounds, social, 
economic, and literary, should be clearly outlined, and the 
distinct literary movements and stylistic fashions should 
be at least briefly expounded and interpreted. But by all 
means this should be a subsidiary and not a primary end, 
and certainly the pupils should be first made acquainted, 
through actual contact, with the best models of the various 
kinds of literary expression in the various periods. (A brief 
outline of American literature by periods will be found 
on pp. 638-641.) 

It is not enough for the selections to satisfy the mere 
historic curiosity as to the kind of writing that was being 
produced and most widely read in a given period. This 
is decidedly interesting and valuable to the special student 
of literature, and it has the same cultural value as has 
the study of other sorts of history ; but it is unwise to ask 
the average high-school student to spend much of his time 
in conning over the mere historical facts in the develop- 
ment of our literature. The primary or essential demand 
is for the use by the pupil of complete classics, — the very 
best examples of our various literary types, with such helps 
as will lead him to form the habit of reading closely and 
such critical apparatus as will develop in him the ability to 



xiv American Literary Readings 

appreciate and recognize literary values. As far as possible, 
material should be selected which will command his interest 
and at the same time be of permanent value to him in 
training his artistic taste and developing his literary judg- 
ment. In no case should a puerile or depraved taste or a 
temporary fad be pandered to. The best in every kind is 
what our children should have, and we must not allow the 
child's preferences to direct us so absolutely as to make us 
fail to give him what is really good for him, that is, what 
will tend to develop and refine his taste and character. 

In the present volume the aim has been to cull from 
the mass of nineteenth-century American literature certain 
essential masterpieces which every child should know, and 
to present them with sufficient critical apparatus to make 
them easily understood and thoroughly accessible from the 
literary point of view. It is a well-known fact that the 
pupil frequently has no idea how to study an assignment 
in literature. About all he knows to do is to read over in 
a desultory way the required number of lines or pages of 
an assignment, without making the slightest effort to get 
below the surface into the real import and force and literary 
values of the piece he is supposed to study. With the 
proper kind of notes, study suggestions, and leading questions 
before him, he can easily attain some skill in making the 
literary attack for himself. Hence we have given in the 
back of this book full introductory and explanatory notes, 
and followed these by a fairly exhaustive list of questions 
and exercises, all of which are intended to open to the pupil 
the real literary values of the selections. 

It is not intended, of course, that these questions should 
be followed mechanically in the recitation. The very 
worst possible method of teaching a classic is that by which 
the pupils are made to memorize notes and give mechanical 
answers to stereotyped questions. The helps will defeat 
their own end if they are ever allowed to usurp the main 
interest of the recitation. Let it be repeated until there can 
be no chance of mistake, the literature itself ^ is the main thing. 
The notes should be used only in connection with the text, 
and never studied for their own sake. The questions 
should be similarly used only as an adjunct to the complete 
understanding and interpretation of the text. Most 
teachers will prefer to ask their own questions, but it is 
hoped that the exercises and questions found in the volimie 



The Introduction XV 

will at least be suggestive to the teacher, and certainly 
afford a guide for study and interpretation for the pupil. 
Occasionally the teacher may wish to select particular 
questions for study, and sometimes it may be wise to require 
written answers to be prepared outside of the class. At 
least enough questions should be assigned to make the. pupils 
feel the necessity of definite preparation for class recitation. 
If the questions are never resorted to specifically, the pupils 
will soon develop the habit of ignoring them. 

Minute and detailed study of a single classic is frequently 
advantageous, but on the whole it is better for the pupils 
to get the big idea or dominant impression of many pieces 
of literature than to be surfeited by a too minute and ex- 
tended study of one classic. Many teachers make the mis- 
take of spending entirely too much time on some single 
long masterpiece, like Evangeline for example, so that the 
pupils become thoroughly disgusted with it. Interminable 
drill and analysis will kill the spirit of the finest piece of 
literature in the world. Pupils like variety and progress 
from one type to another and from one selection to another, 
and when they are held too long at one task they inevitably 
rebel and lose their zest and interest. In many city schools 
the same classics are held in the course year after year and 
drilled on so minutely and persistently that both the pupils' 
and the teacher's vitality^ and alertness are sapped and 
deadened. . ^' 

Again, it has been demonstrated that it will not do to 
force too much poetry upon young minds. Poetry is more 
concentrated, more suited to minute analysis, more easily 
taught, and hence more attractive to the adult mind of 
the teacher; but the child naturally prefers the less con- 
centrated and more easily grasped content of prose. It is 
desirable, then, to mix the two types in some equitable 
proportion. An attempt has been made in this volume 
to give about an equal amount of prose and poetry. The 
poetical selections are somewhat more nimierous because 
they are usually shorter, but the number of pages of each 
kind is very nearly equal. 

A detailed study of the technique of verse is not desirable 
in the grades or in the high-school course of study, but at 
least the essential elements of metrics should be presented 
rather early in the pupil's preparation for literary study. 
The natural tendency of the child is to overemphasize the 



xvi American Literary Readings 

rhythm of poetical selections, and one of the teacher's chief 
aims in the earlier years is to prevent the sing-song or 
mechanical rendition of metrical passages. The fact that 
the child does want to read his poetry in this sing-song 
fashion is clear proof that he can be easily taught the elements 
of meter at an early stage, and we should always take 
advantage of this instinct and direct and inform him. Not 
many technical terms should be memorized, but the four 
fundamental and two occasional English rhythms and the 
more common matters of meter should at least be presented. 
The brief treatise given on pp. 642-647 will, it is believed, 
answer all practical purposes. It may be necessary here 
to give a warning against a too prominent emphasis on 
the mere mechanics of verse. The very novelty of the 
subject is likely to lead some teachers into extremes. Only 
a small fraction of the pupil's time and energy should be 
consumed in these mechanical exercises of scansion. Just 
enough practice to give the young reader an introduction 
into the mechanics of English meter so that he can recog- 
nize the different types is all that is necessary. 

II. Classification of Selections 

A number of teachers in recent years have preferred to 
study literature by types instead of chronologically by 
authors or by literary schools, or movements, as has been 
the prevailing custom in the past. In the present volume 
we have attempted to include as many different types 
as was consistent with the other aims of the book, and for 
the convenience of teachers who desire to present the 
material by types we have grouped the selections in the 
following table under the commonly accepted rubrics. Of 
course, in any such classification there will inevitably be 
some overlapping, and the teacher must be depended upon 
to point out instances of such. 

Poetry is classified as epic, dramatic, and lyric, and 
additional divisions are sometimes given to cover didactic 
and satiric verse. Under the epic we have placed all 
narrative verse, including the literary ballads. In a limited 
volume like the present we have found it impractical to 
include drama, either in poetry or in prose. The lyric is 
easily divided into subordinate types, and for convenience 
we may classify the kinds of lyrics under five headings — 



The Introduction xvii 

namely, greater lyrics: (i) ode, (2) elegy, (3) idyl; lesser 
lyrics: (4) song-lyric, (5) sonnet. The more detailed classifi- 
cation of lyrics according to the emotion expressed, such as 
love, grief, nature, social, humorous, pathetic, patriotic, 
philosophic, religious, we have largely left to the judgment 
of the teacher, who may in turn secure the reaction of the 
pupils on this point in the daily class exercises. 

The prose selections fall under one of three divisions — 
namely, the essay, the oration, and the story (including 
selections from longer narratives). Subdivisions of the 
first two rubrics may be made according to type, as, of the 
essay, formal or informal in structure; critical, philosophical, 
didactic, and the like, in subject-matter. The short prose 
narratives may be variously classified into the sketch, the 
tale, the short story; or again, according to purpose or 
aim, into stories of character, situation, local color, humor, 
pathos, and the like. 

POETRY 

I. Epic or Narrative: Longfellow, Evangeline, Excelsior, The Wreck 
of the Hesperus; Whittier, Skipper Ireson's Ride; Lowell, The 
Vision of Sir Launfal, The Courtin'; Miller, Kit Carson's Ride. 

II. Lyric: 

1. Ode: Bryant, To a Waterfowl; Whitman, Out of the Cradle 

Endlessly Rocking, The Mystic Trumpeter; Timrod, Ode. 

2. Elegy: Bryant, Thanatopsis, The Death of the Flowers; Poe, 

Ulalume; Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard 
Bloom'd, O Captain! My Captain! 

3. Idyl: Whittier, Snow-Bound. 

4. Song-lyric: Bryant, Robert of Lincoln; Poe, To Helen, Israfel, 

Eldorado; Emerson, Concord Hymn, The Rhodora, The 
Humble-Bee, Days; Longfellow, A Psalm of Life, Hymn to 
the Night, Maidenhood, The Arrow and the Song; Whittier, 
In School-Days, Ichabod; Holmes, The Last Leaf, The 
Chambered Nautilus; Field, Dutch Lullaby, In the Fire- 
light; Miller, Columbus; Lanier, Song of the Chattahoochee; 
Riley, Afterwhiles, The Raggedy Man; Timrod, Spring; 
Hayne, Aspects of the Pines; Moody, Gloucester Moors. 

5. Sonnet: Longfellow, Divina Commedia; Hayne, Composed in 

Autumn; Poe, To Science. 

III. Satiric: Lowell, A Fable for Critics; Holmes, The Deacon's Master- 
piece. 

PROSE 

I. Essay: Irving, Westminster Abbey; Poe, Review of Hawthorne's 
"Twice-told Tales"; Emerson, Compensation, Heroism; Holmes, 
"The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Section IV, "The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Section XI; Thoreau, Brute 
Neighbors (Chapter XII of "Walden, or Life in the Woods"). 



xviii American Literary Readings 

II. Oration: Lincoln, Gettysburg Speech; Lowell, Our Literature. 
III. Story: Irving, Rip Van Winkle; Cooper, "The Last of the Mo- 
hicans" (Chapter IH, Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and Uncas) ; Poe, 
The Cask of Amontillado, The Purloined Letter; Hawthorne, The 
Ambitious Guest, The Great Carbuncle, The Wedding-Knell; 
Mark Twain, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras 
County; Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp; O. Henry, 
The Ransom of Red Chief, The Last Leaf. 

III. Oral Reading of Masterpieces 

Finally and by all means, the oral rendition of literary 
masterpieces should be insisted on in all the high-school 
grades. The surest test of real literary appreciation is the 
ability to reproduce in good oral reading the material 
studied. Memory work, then, becomes an essential aid in 
this practical exercise of oral reproduction. The pupils 
should be trained to do good oral reading directly from the 
text, of course, but a finished and final oral rendition from 
memory will fix the real literary values of a masterpiece in 
the child's mind in a way that no amount of mere cursory 
reading will do. A rapid sight reading of each selection, 
before the more detailed literary study is made, is essential 
to a consecutive grasp of the selection as a whole; but the 
final test of all the study put upon a selection is the pupil's 
ability to reproduce its thought content and its emotional 
and esthetic values by a good oral reading ; and in the case 
of the shorter selections, undoubtedly the surest means of 
attaining this full literary appreciation on the part of the 
pupil is to demand of him accurate and expressive memory 
reproduction before the whole class or the entire school. 




From an engraving by E. Burney, after a phofograph 
WASHINGTON IRVING 



AMERICAN 
LITERARY READINGS 

WASHINGTON IRVING 
1783-1859 

Washington Irving has been called "The Father of 
American Literature," just as the great statesman and 
soldier for whom he was named is called "The Father of 
His Country." In a certain sense, Irving is the father of 
American literature. He was not our first author to devote 
himself entirely to literature, for Charles Brockden Brown 
had done that just before him; but he was the first of our 
authors to gain recognition abroad, or as Thackeray happily 
phrased it in his essay "Nil Nisi Bonum," "Irving was the, 
first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the 
Old." The Sketch Book was, in fact, the first positive answer 
to the tantalizing British query, "Who reads an American 
book?" 

Irving vvas born in New York City, April 3, 1783, the year 
which marked the defeat of Cornwallis and the close of the 
Revolution, and his mother, who was an ardent patriot, 
decided to name him for the great American general, for, she 
said, "Washington's work is ended, and the child shall be 
named for him." When Irving was six years old, his old 
Scotch nurse presented him to President Washington for 
his blessing. Irving remembered the incident, remarking 
in later years, "That blessing has attended me through 
life." It is interesting, finally, to note in this connection 
that Irving's last great work was the five-volume Life of 
Washington, which appeared in 1859 just before his death. 

Irving's parents were both born abroad, his father being 
of Scotch and his mother of English descent. There were 
born to them eleven children, of whom Washington was the 
youngest. He was a delicate child, and his education, so 
far as formal school training is concerned, was desultory. 
He read tales of travel and adventure, particularly the 
Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe, when he ought to have 
been studying his arithmetic; and it is said that he would 



2 American Literary Readings 

willingly write the other boys' compositions if they would 
work his sums for him. He dropped out of school at sixteen, 
failing to take advantage of the opportunity of attending 
Columbia College as two of his brothers did. Instead, he 
spent his time in reading tales of romance, slipping away from 
home before and after family prayers to attend the newly 
opened theater, and roaming the country roundabout, listen- 
ing to the good wives' tales about ghosts and fairies in the sur- 
rounding hills and valleys. He made several long holiday 
excursions into the Hudson River hill country farther 
north, going on one of his trips even as far north as Canada, 
and collecting all the while those legends and nature pictures 
which he has so well preserved in "Rip Van Winkle" and 
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." 

The plan for young Irving's future was that he should 
become a lawyer. The chief result of his five years of 
desultory study of law, largely in Judge Hoffman's office, 
was his acquaintance with the Judge's daughter, Matilda. 
She was a beautiful and quick-witted girl, and Irving fell 
desperately in love with her. She was equally attracted to 
the handsome and genial youth and promised to marry him, 
but she developed rapid tuberculosis and died in her eight- 
eenth year. Irving's devotion to her memory is one of the 
most beautiful things in his life.. He did not seclude himself 
from society nor become sentimentally morbid; indeed, he 
was always delighted with the society of women, and the 
evidence seems to show that he had some serious intentions 
of marrying later in life. But the fact remains that he never 
married, and after his death there were found among his 
cherished personal belongings a lock of Miss Hoffman's 
hair and her Bible and prayerbook. 

Irving's constitution was still frail, and so in 1804 it was 
decided that he should visit Europe partly in search of health, 
but partly also for literary and cultural advantages. He 
traveled through Italy, France, and England, meeting many 
distinguished persons and making many friends by his 
genial manners and attractive personality. On his return 
in 1806, he was admitted to the bar, but he devoted his time 
more to social engagements and literary experiments than 
to his profession. Before his trip abroad he had contributed 
to a New York paper a series of light satiric letters, sign- 
ing them "Jonathan Oldstyle," a name which indicates at 
this early period his predilection for the seventh-century 



Washington Irving 3 

Addisonian prose style. With James K. Paulding he now 
undertook another experiment, a semi-monthly periodical 
called Salmagundi. It was modeled on the Spectator of 
Addison and Steele, and though it did not run quite a year, 
it gave both of these men an outlet for their literary aspira- 
tions and eventually led to other undertakings in authorship. 

Irving's works may be divided into three classes: his 
humorous and serious sketches and essays, his longer con- 
nected narratives, and his biographical and historical narra- 
tives. The first of these is the most important and will 
receive the major part of our attention. 

A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) 
was the first really important work by Irving. It was begun 
as a satiric burlesque on Dr. Samuel Mitchell's Picture 
oj New York, but it was carried out in such a fine spirit of 
humorous extravaganza that it was at once recognized as 
an original and imaginative work. It was preceded by a 
clever series of advertising notes, in the form of news items 
about the peculiar and distressing disappearance of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, "a small, elderly gentleman, dressed in an 
old black coat and a cocked hat." He had left behind 
him a curious manuscript, which would be sold to pay his 
board bill. Naturally when this manuscript was published, 
everybody wanted to read it, and everybody, except a few 
serious-minded Dutch historians, was delighted with the 
fresh and good-natured badinage, the mock-serious exaggera- 
tion, and the quaint Dutch reminiscences. The book was 
talked about and bandied so freely that it gave a new word 
to the language, Knickerbocker, the generic name of the 
Dutch freeholders in America, a term later applied to the first 
distinctive period of American literature. It is a difficult 
thing for a purely humorous work to hold its place of popu- 
larity, and so we find to-day few readers of Knickerbocker's 
History. A little of it is still highly amusing, but the style 
in writing, as in dress, changes from generation to genera- 
tion, and the broad splashes of humor and elephantine 
facetiousness of Knickerbocker s History are not so attractive 
to modern readers as they were to Irving's contemporaries. 

After Knickerbocker' s History Irving seems to have rested 
on his laurels for a period of ten years. He was nominally 
engaged in business with his brothers, but his duties seem to 
have been mainly to keep up the social side of the house. He 
was sent to Washington, ostensibly to protect the claims of 



4 American Literary Readings 

certain business interests before Congress, buj: his letters 
relate more of his experiences in Mrs. Dolly Madison's 
and others' drawing-rooms than of his business activities. 
He also visited Baltimore and Philadelphia, where he was 
received in the best society. His literary success had paved 
the way for him everywhere, and he was already something 
of a social lion. So ran the merry years away; and some 
rather serious ones, too, for Irving passed through the War 
of 1812, not in active service but as a military aid to Gov- 
ernor Tompkins of New York. 

In 181 5 he went to England to visit one of his brothers. 
He intended to stay only a short time, but it was 183 1 before 
he set foot on American soil again. He became the familiar 
friend of many notable persons in England and Paris and 
Dresden, among them Sir Walter Scott, whom he visited 
at Abbotsford. Then the business affairs of the family 
had gone to the bad, and Irving turned to literature for 
support. In 1819 he sent his manuscript sketches back to 
New York and had them published serially in nine numbers 
as The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Sir Walter Scott 
interested himself in Irving's behalf and finally succeeded 
in getting the famous English publishing house of Murray 
to bring out a standard edition in England during the next 
year. The book was a great success — the first American 
- book, in fact, that had been widely read in England. Some 
of the sketches now appeal to us as over-sentimental and 
even mawkish, but the fine quality of the style, the rich 
humor, and the emotional fitness of most of the pieces make 
the Sketch Book a classic in our literature. Four of the papers 
have been singled out to endure as long as the language — 
" Rip Van Winkle " and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," 
two tales supposed to be the posthumous work of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, and two serious essays, " Stratford-on-Avon " 
and "Westminster Abbey." 

Other books of sketches and stories are Bvacehridge Hall 
(1822), Tales oj a Traveler (1S24), The Alhambra (1832), and 
Woolfert's Roost (1855). Each of these contains some excel- 
lent work, but" no one of them quite equals thfe Sketch Book 
in power and popularity. The Alhambra, called by Prescott 
"that delightful Spanish Sketch Book, " is, next to the original 
volume, the best of all the series of short sketches and stories. 

These essays, sketches, and tales, then, are the produc- 
tions upon which Irving's literary fame chiefly rests. In this 



Washington Irving 5 

connection we may quote a significant passage from a letter 
written by Irving in 1824 when some of his friends were 
urging him to write a novel: "For my part, I consider a 
story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials. 
It is the play of thought and sentiment and language; the 
weaving in of characters, lightly, yet expressively delineated; 
the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life ; 
and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing 
through the whole — these are among what I aim at, and 
upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I suc- 
ceed. ^ I have preferred adopting the mode of sketches and 
short tales rather than long works, because I choose to take 
a line of writing peculiar to myself, rather than fall into the 
manner and school of any other writer." 

We may dismiss the second class with but a brief men- 
tion of titles: A Tottr of the Prairies (1835), Astoria (1836), 
and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). These, 
though American in setting and coloring, being the results 
of Irving's tour in what was then the wild western frontier, 
just across the Mississippi, are the least valuable of all 
Irving's works. They are mere ephemeral "pot-boilers," 
and their chief interest now lies in their historic record of the 
frontier life. 

The third class of Irving's writings really begins with his 
second distinct literary impulse- — namely, that received from 
his sojourn in Spain. Here we find the ambitious biographies 
and historical narratives taking shape. In 1826 Irving was 
invited to Spain to undertake a translation of a new work, 
The Voyage of Columbus. When he reached Madrid, he 
found that this new book was not suited for translation ; but 
nothing daunted he began with prodigious energy to collect 
material for an original Life of Columbus. He found a great 
mass of documents ready to his hand, and in 1828 Murray 
published the three-volume Life of Columbus. This was the 
first of Irving's Spanish studies, and also his first effort in 
biographical narrative. Then followed a number of other 
books dealing with Spanish history, among them being 
The Conquest of Granada (1829), Legend of the Conquest 
of Spain (1835), and Mahomet and His Successors (1850). 
The Alhambra has already 'been mentioned in the discussion 
of Irving's shorter sketches. 

It was while he was in Spain also that Irving conceived 
the plan of writing his biographical masterpiece, The Life 



6 American Literary Readings 

of Washington (1859), but it was not until after his second 
residence in Spain and his final return to America that he 
carried out this design. The one other biographical work 
which must not be omitted is The Life of Oliver Goldsmith 
(1849), published also after his final return to America. 
This is the most popular of all his biographies because it is 
briefer and probably more sympathetic in its treatment 
than either of the other two more extended studies. In 
fact, Goldsmith and Irving are similar in many respects. 
Each was good-natured and genial, each was more or less 
improvident and impecunious, — though Irving succeeded 
in accumulating a competence toward the end of his life, — 
each remained unmarried through life, and each possessed 
a peculiarly harmonious and charming prose style. More- 
over, the subject-matter of a good deal of their work is 
similar, and, finally, each of them has been called the best- 
beloved author in his country. However, as Professor 
William P. Trent points out, Irving is not an imitator 
merely, but an original writer. "He is not an American 
Goldsmith; he is an Anglo-Saxon Irving." 

Upon Irving's return to America in 1831 he thought he 
would settle down for a quiet and peaceful literary life. He 
bought an estate on the Hudson and named it "Sunnyside," 
and here he made himself comfortable. His American pub- 
lishers brought out a complete edition of his works, a ven- 
ture which was undertaken with some hesitation, but which 
proved eminently successful, Irving himself receiving 
$88,000 in royalties before his death. 

In 1842 he was appointed minister to Spain, an honor 
which he had abundantly earned, but one which he accepted 
almost as a burden.because it took him away from his home. 
He gladly relinquished his post in 1846 and came back to 
America to complete his last literary work, The Life of 
Washington. He was feted and sought after and honored 
in many ways by his admirers. But he was growing tired 
of it all, and his only hope now was that he might "go 
down with all sail set." He died at "Sunnyside," Novem- 
ber 28, 1859, full of years and rich in love and honors. His 
tomb overlooks Sleepy Hollow and the majestic river which 
he loved and over which he has thrown the glamour of 
romance and literary legend. 

(The standard life of Irving is that by Pierre Irving in three volumes. 
The biographies by Charles Dudley Warner and H. W. Boynton in 
the American Men of Letters and the Riverside Biographical Series 
respectively are excellent shorter studies.) 



RIP VAN WINKLE 

A POSTHUMOUS WRITING OF DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER 

By Woden, God of Saxons, 

From whence comes Wensday, that is Wodensday. 

Truth is a thing that ever I will keep 

Unto thylke day in which I creep into 

My sepulchre 

Cartwright 

The following Tale was found among the papers of the late Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, an old gentleman of New York, who was very curious 
in the Dutch history of the province, and the manners of the descendants 
from its primitive settlers. His historical researches, however, did not 
lie so much among books as among men ; for the former are lamentably 5 
scanty on his favorite topics; whereas he found the old burghers, and 
still more their wives, rich in that legendary lore, so invaluable to true 
history. Whenever, therefore, he happened upon a genuine Dutch 
family, snugly shut up in its low-roofed farmhouse, under a spreading 
sycamore, he looked upon it as a little clasped volume of black-letter, 10 
and studied it with the zeal of a book-worm. 

The result of all these researches was a history of the province during 
the reign of the Dutch governors, which he published some years since. 
There have been various opinions as to the literary character of his 
work, and, to tell the truth, it is not a whit better than it should be. 15 
Its chief merit is its scrupulous accuracy, which indeed was a little 
questioned, on its first appearance, but has since been completely estab- 
lished; and it is now admitted into all historical collections, as a book of 
unquestionable authority. 

The old gentleman died shortly after the publication of his work, and 20 
now that he is dead and gone, it cannot do much harm to his memory to 
say, that his time might have been much better employed in weightier 
labors. He, however, was apt to ride his hobby his own way; and 
though it did now and then kick up the dust a little in the eyes of his 
neighbors, and grieve the spirit of some friends, for whom he felt the 25 
truest deference and affection; yet his errors and follies are remem- 
bered "more in sorrow than in anger," and it begins to be suspected, 
that he never intended to injure or offend. But however his memory 
may be appreciated by critics, it is still held dear by many folk, whose 
good opinion is well worth having; particularly by certain biscuit- 30 
bakers, who have gone so far as to imprint his likeness on their new-year 
cakes; and have thus given him a chance for immortality, almost equal 
to the being stamped on a Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne's Farthing. 

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remem- 
ber the Kaatskill Mountains. They are a dismembered 35 
branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away 
to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and 

[7] 



8 American Literary Readings 

lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of 
season, every change of weather, indeed every hour of the 

4 day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes 
of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good 
wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the 
weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and 
purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; 

45 but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, 
they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, 
which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light 
up like a crown of glory. 

At the foot of these fairy mountains, the voyager may 

50 have descried the light smoke curling up from a village, 
whose shingle-roofs gleam among the trees, just where the 
blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of 
the nearer landscape. It is a little village, of great antiquity, 
having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists, in the 

55 early times of the province, just about the beginning of the 
government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in 
peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original 
settlers standing within a few years, built of small yellow 
bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and 

60 gable fronts, surmounted with weather- cocks. 

In that same village, and in one of these very houses 
(which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and 
weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the 
country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple good- 

65 natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a 
descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in 
the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied 
him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, 
but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have 

70 observed that he was a simple good-natured man; he was, 
moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked 
husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be 
owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such 



Rip Van Winkle g 

universal popularity ; for those men are most apt to be obse- 
quious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline 75 
of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered 
pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribula- 
tion, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the 
world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. 
A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be con- so 
sidered a tolerable blessing; and if so. Rip Van Winkle was 
thrice blessed. 

Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the 
good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable 
sex, took his part in all family squabbles; and never failed, ss 
whenever they talked those matters over in their evening 
gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The 
children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever 
he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their play- 
things, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told 90 
them long stories of ghosts, witches, and Indians. When- 
ever he went dodging about the village, he was surrounded 
by a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his 
back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; 
and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighbor- 95 
hood. 

The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable 
aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be 
from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit 
on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's 100 
lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he 
should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would 
carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, 
trudging through woods and swamps, and up hill and down 
dale, to shoot a few squirrels or wild pigeons. He would 105 
never refuse to assist a neighbor even in the roughest toil, 
and was a foremost man at all country frolics for husking 
Indian com, or building stone-fences; the women of the 
village, too, used to employ him to run their errands, and to 



lo American Literary Readings 

no do such little odd jobs as their less obliging husbands would 

not do for them. In a word Rip was ready to attend to 

any body's business but his own; but as to doing family 

duty, and keeping his farm in order, he found it impossible. 

In fact, he declared it was of no use to work on his farm; 

115 it was the most pestilent little piece of ground in the whole 
country; every thing about it went wrong, and would go 
wrong, in spite of him. His fences were continually falling 
to pieces ; his cow would either go astray, or get among the 
cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than 

120 any where else; the rain always made a point of setting in just 
as he had some out-door work to do ; so that though his patri- 
monial estate had dwindled away under his management, 
acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere 
patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst 

125 conditioned farm in the neighborhood. 

His children, too, were as ragged and wild as if they 
belonged to nobody. His son Rip, an urchin begotten in 
his own likeness, promised to inherit the habits, with the 
old clothes of his father. He was generally seen trooping 

130 like a colt at his mother's heels, equipped in a pair of his 
father's cast-off galligaskins, which he had much ado to hold 
up with one hand, as a fine lady does her train in bad 
weather. 

Rip Van Winkle, however, was one of those happy mor- 

)35tals, of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world 
easy, eat white bread or brown, whichever can be got with 
least thought or trouble, and would rather starve on a penny 
than work for a pound. If left to himself, he would have 
whistled life away in perfect contentment ; but his wife kept 

140 continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his care- 
lessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family. Morn- 
ing, noon, and night, her tongue was incessantly going, and 
everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of 
household eloquence. Rip had but one way of replying to 

145 all lectures of the kind, and that, by frequent use, had 



Rip Van Winkle ii 

grown into a habit. He shrugged his shoulders, shook his 
head, cast up his eyes, but said nothing. This, however, 
always provoked a fresh volley from his wife; so that he was 
fain to draw off his forces, and take to the outside of the 
house — the only side which, in truth, belongs to a hen- pecked iso 
husband. 

Rip's sole domestic adherent was his dog Wolf, who was 
as much hen-pecked as his master; for Dame Van Winkle 
regarded them as companions in idleness, and even looked 
upon Wolf with an evil eye, as the cause of his master's going 155 
so often astray. True it is, in all points of spirit befitting an 
honorable dog, he was as courageous an animal as ever 
scoured the woods — but what courage can withstand the 
ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? 
The moment Wolf entered the house his crest fell, his tail leo 
drooped to the ground or curled between his legs, he sneaked 
about with a gallows air, casting many a sidelong glance at 
Dame Van Winkle, and at the least flourish of a broomstick 
or ladle, he would fly to the door with yelping precipitation. 

Times grew worse and worse with Rip Van Winkle as years i65 
of matrimony rolled on; a tart temper never mellows with 
age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows 
keener with constant use. For a long while he used to con- 
sole himself, when driven from home, by frequenting a kind 
of perpetual club of the sages, philosophers, and other idle 170 
personages of the village; which held its sessions on a bench 
before a small inn, designated by a rubicund portrait of His 
Majesty George the Third. Here they used to sit in the 
shade through a long lazy summer's day, talking listlessly 
over village gossip, or telling endless sleepy stories about 175 
nothing. But it would have been worth any statesman's 
money to have heard the profound discussions that some- 
times took place, when by chance an old newspaper fell 
into their hands from some passing traveler. How solemnly 
they would listen to the contents, as drawled out by Derrick iso 
Van Bimimel, the schoolmaster, a dapper learned little man. 



12 American Literary Readings 

who was not to be daunted by the most gigantic word in 
the dictionary; and how sagely they would deliberate upon 
public events some months after they had taken place. 

185 The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by 
Nicholas Vedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord 
of the inn, at the door of which he took his seat from morning 
till night, just moving sufficiently to avoid the sun and keep 
in the shade of a large tree ; so that the neighbors could tell 

190 the hour by his movements as accurately as by a sun-dial. 
It is true he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked his pipe 
incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man 
has his adherents) , perfectly understood him, and knew how 
to gather his opinions. When any thing that was read or 

195 related displeased him, he was observed to smoke his pipe 
vehemently, and to send forth short, frequent and angry 
puffs; but when pleased, he would inhale the smoke slowly 
and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds; and 
sometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the 

200 fragrant vapor curl about his nose, would gravely nod his 
head in token of perfect approbation. 

From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length 
routed by his termagant wife, who would suddenly break in 
upon the tranquillity of the assemblage and call the mem- 

205 bers all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas 
Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible 
virago, who charged him outright with encouraging her hus- 
band in habits of idleness. 

Poor Rip was at last reduced almost to despair; and his 

210 only alternative, to escape from the labor of the farm and 
clamor of his wife, was to take gun in hand and stroll away 
into the woods. Here he would sometimes seat himself at 
the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with 
Wolf, with whom he sympathized as a fellow-sufferer in 

215 persecution. "Poor Wolf," he would say, "thy mistress 
leads thee a dog's life of it; but never mind, my lad, whilst 
I live thou shalt never want a friend to stand by thee!" 



Rip Van Winkle 13 

Wolf would wag his tail, look wistfully in his master's face, 
and if dogs can feel pity, I verily believe he reciprocated the 
sentiment with all his heart. 220 

In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip 
had unconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of 
the Kaatskill Mountains. He was after his favorite sport 
of squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and 
re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, 225 
he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, 
covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of 
a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could 
overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich wood- 
land. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below 230 
him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflec- 
tion of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, here and 
there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losing itself 
in the blue highlands. 

On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain 235 
glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with frag- 
ments from the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the 
reflected rays of the setting sun. For some time Rip lay 
musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the 
mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the 240 
valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could 
reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he 
thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle. 

As he was about to descend, he heard a voice from a dis- 
tance, hallooing, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" 245 
He looked round, but could see nothing but a crow winging 
its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy 
must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when 
he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air/ 
"Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!" — at the same time 250 
Wolf bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to 
his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip 
now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him; he looked 



14 American Literary Readings 

anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange fig- 

255 ure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight 
of something he carried on his back. He was surprised to 
see any himian being in this lonely and unfrequented place, 
but supposing it to be some one of the neighborhood in need 
of his assistance, he hastened down to yield it. 

260 On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the 
singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short 
square-built old fellow, with thick bushy hair, and a grizzled 
beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion — a cloth 
jerkin strapped round the waist — several pair of breeches, 

265 the outer one of ample volume, decorated with rows of but- 
tons down the sides, and bunches at the knees. He bore on 
his shoulder a stout keg, that seemed full of liquor, and made 
signs for Rip to approach and assist him with the load. 
Though rather shy and distrustful of this new acquaintance, 

270 Rip complied with his usual alacrity; and mutually relieving 
each other, they clambered up a narrow gully, apparently 
the dry bed of a mountain torrent. As they ascended. Rip 
every now and then heard long rolling peals, like distant 
thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rather 

275 cleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path 
conducted. He paused for an instant, but supposing it to be 
the muttering of one of those transient thunder-showers 
which often take place in mountain heights, he proceeded. 
Passing through the ravine, they came to a hollow, like a 

280 small amphitheatre, surrounded by perpendicular precipices, 
over the brinks of which impending trees shot their branches, 
so that you only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the 
bright evening cloud. During the whole time Rip and his 
companion had labored on in silence; for though the former 

285 marvelled greatly what could be the object of carrying a 
keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was some- 
thing strange and incomprehensible about the unknown, 
that inspired awe and checked familiarity. 

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder 



Rip Van Winkle 15 

presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a 290 
company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. 
They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion; some 
wore short doublets, others jerkins, with long knives in their 
belts, and most of them had enormous breeches, of similar 
style with that of the guide's. Their visages, too, were 295 
peculiar : one had a large head, broad face, and small piggish 
eyes : the face of another seemed to consist entirely of nose, 
and was surmounted by a white sugar-loaf hat, set off with 
a little red cock's tail. They all had beards, of various 
shapes and colors. There was one who seemed to be 300 
the commander. He was a stout old gentleman, with 
a weather-beaten countenance; he wore a laced doublet, 
broad belt and hanger, high-crowned hat and feather, red 
stockings, and high-heeled shoes, with roses in them. The 
whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish 305 
painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Shaick, the village 
parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at 
the time of the settlement. 

What seemed particularly odd to Rip was, that though 
these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they 310 
maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, 
and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he 
had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of 
the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they 
were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals 315 
of thunder. 

As Rip and his companion approached them, they sud- 
denly desisted from their play, and stared at him with such 
fixed statue-like gaze, and such strange, uncouth, lack-lustre 
countenances, that his heart turned within him, and his 320 
knees smote together. His companion now emptied the 
contents of the keg into large flagons, and made signs to him 
to wait upon the company. He obeyed with fear and 
trembling; tjiey quaffed the liquor in profound silence, and 
then returned to their game. 325 



1 6 American Literary Readings 

By degrees Rip's awe and apprehension subsided. He 
even ventured, when no eye was fixed upon him, to taste 
the beverage, which he found had much of the flavor of excel- 
lent Hollands. He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was 

330 soon tempted to repeat the draught. One taste provoked 
another; and he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often 
that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in 
his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep 
sleep. 

335 On waking, he found himself on the green knoll .whence 
he had first seen the old man of the glen. He rubbed his 
eyes — it was a bright sunny morning. The birds were 
hopping and twittering among the bushes, and the eagle was 
wheeling aloft, and breasting the pure mountain breeze. 

340 "Surely," thought Rip, "I have not slept here all night." 
He recalled the occurrences before he fell asleep. The 
strange man with a keg of liquor — the mountain ravine — 
the wild retreat among the rocks- — the wobegone party 
at nine-pins — the flagon — "Oh! that flagon! that wicked 

345 flagon!" thought Rip — "what excuse shall I make to Dame 
Van Winkle!" 

He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean 
well-oiled fowling-piece, he found an old firelock lying by 
him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and 

350 the stock worm-eaten. He now suspected that the grave 
roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and, 
having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun. 
Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away 
after a squirrel or partridge. He whistled after him and 

355 shouted his name, but all in vain; the echoes repeated 
his whistle and shout, but no dog was to be seen. 

He determined to revisit the scene of the last evening's 
gambol, and if he met with any of the party, to demand 
his dog and gun. As he rose to walk, he found himself stiff 

360 in the joints, and wanting in his usual activity. "These 
mountain beds do not agree with me," thought Rip, "and 



Rip Van Winkle 17 

if this frolic should lay me up with a fit of the rheumatism, 
I shall have a blessed time with Dame Van Winkle." With 
some difficulty he got down into the glen: he found the 
gully up which he and his companion had ascended the ses 
preceding evening; but to his astonishment a mountain 
stream was now foaming down it, leaping from rock to rock, 
and filling the glen with babbling murmurs. He, however, 
made shift to scramble up its sides, working his toilsome 
way through thickets of birch, sassafras, and witch-hazel, 370 
and sometimes tripped up or entangled by the wild grape- 
vines that twisted their coils or tendrils from tree to tree, 
and spread a kind of network in his path. 

At length he reached to where the ravine had opened 
through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such 375 
opening remained. The rocks presented a high impene- 
trable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet 
of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black 
from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, 
poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and sso 
whistled after his dog; he was only answered by the cawing 
of a flock of idle crows, sporting high in air about a dry tree 
that overhung a sunny precipice; and who, secure in their 
elevation, seemed to look down and scoff at the poor man's 
perplexities. What was to be done? the morning was sss 
passing away, and Rip felt famished for want of his break- 
fast. He grieved to give up his dog and gun; he dreaded to 
meet his wife ; but it would not do to starve among the 
mountains. He shook his head, shouldered the rusty fire- 
lock, and, with a heart full of trouble and anxiety, turned 390 
his steps homeward. 

As he approached the village he met a number of people, 
but none whom he knew, which somewhat surprised him, 
for he had thought himself acquainted with every one in the 
country round. Their dress, too, was of a different fashion 39s 
from that to which he was accustomed. They all stared 
at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast 

2 



i8 American Literary . Readings 

their eyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The 
constant recurrence of this gesture induced Rip, involun- 

400 tarily, to do the same, when, to his astonishment, he found 
his beard had grown a foot long! 

He had now entered the skirts of the village. A troop 
of strange children ran at his heels, hooting after him, and 
pointing at his gray beard. The dogs, too, not one of which 

405 he recognized for an old acquaintance, barked at him as he 
passed. The very village was altered; it was larger and 
more populous. There were rows of houses which he had 
never seen before, and those which had been his familiar 
haunts had disappeared. Strange names were over the doors 

410 — strange faces at the windows — every thing was strange. 
His mind now misgave him; he began to doubt whether 
both he and the world around him were not bewitched. 
Surely this was his native village, which he had left but the 
day before. There stood the Kaatskill Mountains — there 

415 ran the silver Hudson at a distance — there was every hill and 
dale precisely as it had always been — Rip was sorely per- 
plexed — "That flagon last night," thought he, "has addled 
my poor head sadly!" 

It was with some difficulty that he found the way to his 

420 own house, which he approached with silent awe, expecting 
every moment to hear the shrill voice of Dame Van Winkle. 
He found the house gone to decay — the roof fallen in, the 
windows shattered, and the doors off the hinges. A half- 
starved dog that looked like Wolf was skulking about it. 

425 Rip called him by name, but the cur snarled, showed his 
teeth, and passed on. This was an unkind cut indeed — 
"My very dog," sighed poor Rip, "has forgotten me!" 

He entered the house, which, to tell the truth, Dame 
Van Winkle had always kept in neat order. It was empty, 

430 forlorn, and apparently abandoned. This desolateness over- 
came all his connubial fears — he called loudly for his wife 
and children — the lonely chambers rang for a moment with 
his voice, and then all again was silence. 



Rip Van Winkle 19 

He now hurried forth, and hastened to his old resort, 
the village inn — but it too was gone. A large rickety 435 
wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping win- 
dows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and 
petticoats, and over the door was painted, "The Union 
Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle." Instead of the great tree 
that used to shelter the quiet little Dutch inn of yore, 440 
there now was reared a tall naked pole, with something on 
the top that looked like a red night-cap, and from it was 
fluttering a flag, on which was a singular assemblage of 
stars and stripes — all this was strange and incomprehensible. 
He recognized on the sign, however, the ruby face of King 445 
George, under which he had smoked so many a peaceful 
pipe; but even this was singularly metamorphosed. The 
red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, a sword was 
held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head was decorated 
with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted in large 450 
characters. General Washington. 

There was, as usual, a crowd of folk about the door, but 
none that Rip recollected. The very character of the people 
seemed changed. There was a busy, bustling, disputatious 
tone about it, instead of the accustomed phlegm and drowsy 45s 
tranquillity. He looked in vain for the sage Nicholas 
Vedder, with his broad face, double chin, and fair long 
pipe, uttering clouds of tobacco-smoke instead of idle 
speeches; or Van Bummel, the schoolmaster, doling forth 
the contents of an ancient newspaper. In place of these, a 46o 
lean, bilious-looking fellow, with his pockets full of hand- 
bills, was haranguing vehemently about rights of citizens — 
elections — members of congress — liberty — Bunker's Hill 
— heroes of seventy-six — and other words, which were a 
perfect Babylonish jargon to the bewildered Van Winkle. 455 

The appearance of Rip, with his long grizzled beard, his 
rusty fowling-piece, his uncouth dress, and an army of 
women and children at his heels, soon attracted the attention 
of the tavern politicians. They crowded round him, eying 



20 American Literary Readings 

470 him from head to foot with great curiosity. The orator 
bustled up to him, and, drawing him partly aside, inquired 
"on which side he voted?" Rip stared in vacant stupidity. 
Another short but busy little fellow pulled him by the arm, 
and, rising on tiptoe, inquired in his ear, "Whether he was 

475 Federal or Democrat?" Rip was equally at a loss to com- 
prehend the question; when a knowing, self-important old 
gentleman, in a sharp cocked hat, made his way through the 
crowd, putting them to the right and left with his elbows 
as he passed, and planting himself before Van Winkle, with 

480 one arm akimbo, the other resting on his cane, his keen eyes 
and sharp hat penetrating, as it were, into his very soul, 
demanded in an austere tone, "what brought him to the 
election with a gun on his shoulder, and a mob at his heels, 
and whether he meant to breed a riot in the village ? " — ' 'Alas ! 

485 gentlemen," cried Rip, somewhat dismayed, "I am a poor 
quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the 
king, God bless him!" 

Here a general shout burst from the by-standers— ■ " A tory ! 
a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!" It 

490 was with great difficulty that the self-important man in the 
cocked hat restored order; and, having assimied a tenfold 
austerity of brow, demanded again of the unknown culprit, 
what he came there for, and whom he was seeking? The 
poor man humbly assured him that he meant no harm, but 

495 merely came there in search of some of his neighbors, who 
used to keep about the tavern. 

"Well — who are they? — name them." 
Rip bethought himself a moment, and inquired, "Where's 
Nicholas Vedder?" 

500 There was a silence for a little while, when an old man 
replied, in a thin piping voice, "Nicholas Vedder! why, 
he is dead and gone these eighteen years! There was a 
wooden tombstone in the church-yard that used to tell all 
about him, but that's rotten and gone too." 

505 "Where's Brom Dutcher?" 



Rip Van Winkle 21 

"Oh, he went off to the army in the beginning of the war; 
some say he was killed at the storming of Stony Point — 
others say he was drowned in a squall at the foot of Antony's 
Nose. I don't know — he never came back again." 

"Where's Van Bummel, the schoolmaster?" 510 

"He went off to the wars too, was a great militia general, 
and is now in Congress." 

Rip's heart died away at hearing of these sad changes in 
his home and friends, and finding himself thus alone in the 
world. Every answer puzzled him too, by treating of such 515 
enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not 
understand: war — congress — Stony Point; — he had no cour- 
age to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, 
"Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?" 

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "Oh, to 520 
be sure ! that 's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the 
tree." 

Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, 
as he went up the mountain: apparently as lazy, and cer- 
tainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely 525 
confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether 
he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewil- 
derment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, 
and what was his name? 

"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wit's end; "I'm not 530 
myself — I'm somebody else — that's me yonder — no — 
that 's somebody else got into my shoes — I was myself last 
night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed 
my gun, and every thing's changed, and I'm changed, and 
I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!" 535 

The by-standers began now to look at each other, nod, 
wink significantly, and tap their fingers against their fore- 
heads. There was a whisper, also, about securing the gun, 
and keeping the old fellow from doing mischief, at the 
very suggestion of which the self-important man in the 540 
cocked hat retired with some precipitation. At this critical 



22 American Literary Readings 

moment a fresh comely woman pressed through the throng 
to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby 
child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began 

545 to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, "hush, you little fool; the 
old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air 
of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train 
of recollections in his mind. "What is your name, my 
good woman?" asked he. 

550 "Judith Gardenier." 

"And your father's name?" 

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's 
twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, 
and never has been heard of since — ^his dog came home 

555 without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried 
away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a 
• little girl." 

Rip had but one question more to ask ; but he put it with 
a faltering voice: 

560 "Where's your mother?" 

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke 

a blood-vessel in a fit of passion at a New-England pedler." 

There was a drop of comfort, at least, in this intelligence. 

The honest man could contain himself no longer. He 

565 caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am 
your father!" cried he — "Young Rip Van Winkle once — old 
Rip Van Winkle now! — Does nobody know poor Rip Van 
Winkle?" 

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from 

570 among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering 
under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! 
it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself! Welcome home again, 
old neighbor — Why, where have you been these twenty 
long years?" 

575 Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had 
been to him but as one night. The neighbors stared when 
they heard it; some were seen to wink at each other, and 



Rip Van Winkle 23 

put their tongues in their cheeks : and the self-important man 
in the cocked hat, who, when the alarm was over, had re- 
turned to the field, screwed down the corners of his mouth, sso 
and shook his head — upon which there was a general shaking 
of the head throughout the assemblage. 

It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old 
Peter Vanderdonk, who was seen slowly advancing up the 
road. He was a descendant of the historian of that name, sss 
who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the province. 
Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and 
well versed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the 
neighborhood. He recollected Rip at once, and corrob- 
orated his story in the most satisfactory manner. He 590 
assured the company that it was a fact, handed down from 
his ancestor the historian, that the Kaatskill mountains 
had always been haunted by strange beings. That it was 
affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first dis- 
coverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there 595 
every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-moon: being 
permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, 
and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city 
called by his name. That his father had once seen them 
in their old Dutch dresses playing at nine-pins in a hollow eoo 
of the mountain ; and that he himself had heard, one summer 
afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distant peals of 
thunder. 

To make a long story short, the company broke up, and 
returned to the more important concerns of the election, eos 
Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a 
snug, well-furnished house, and a stout cheery farmer for a 
husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that 
used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, 
who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, eio 
he was employed to work on the farm ; but evinced an hered- 
itary disposition to attend to any thing else but his business. 

Rip now resumed his old walks and habits; he soon found 



24 American Literary Readings 

many of his former cronies, though all rather the worse for 

615 the wear and tear of time; and preferred m.aking friends 
among the rising generation, with whom he soon grew into 
great favor. 

Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that 
happy age when a man can be idle with impunity, he took 

620 his place once more on the bench at the inn door, and was 
reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village, and a 
chronicle of the old times "before the war." It was some 
time before he could get into the regular track of gossip, 
or could be made to comprehend the strange events that 

625 had taken place during his torpor. How that there had 
been a revolutionary war — that the country had thrown off 
the yoke of old England — and that, instead of being a sub- 
ject of his Majesty George the Third, he was now a free 
citizen of the United States. Rip, in fact, was no politician; 

630 the changes of states and empires made but little impression 
on him ; but there was one species of despotism under which 
he had long groaned, and that was- — ^ petticoat government. 
Happily that was at an end; he had got his neck out of the 
yoke of matrimony, and could go in and out whenever he 

635 pleased, without dreading the tyranny of Dame Van Winkle. 
Whenever her name was mentioned, however, he shook his 
head, shrugged his shoulders, and cast up his eyes; which 
might pass either for an expression of resignation to his fate, 
or joy at his deliverance. 

640 He used to tell his story to every stranger that arrived at 
Mr. Doolittle's hotel. He was observed, at first, to vary 
on some points every time he told it, which was, doubtless, 
owing to his having so recently awaked. It at last settled 
down precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, 

645 woman, or child in the neighborhood, but knew it by heart. 
Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and 
insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this 
was one point on which he always remained flighty. The 
old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it 



Rip Van Winkle 25 

full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder- eso 
storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they 
say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of 
nine-pins; and it is a common wish of all hen-pecked hus- 
bands in the neighborhood, when life hangs heavy on their 
hands, that they might have a quieting draught out o| Rip ess 
Van Winkle's flagon. 

NOTE 

The foregoing Tale, one would suspect, had been suggested to 
Mr. Knickerbocker by a little German superstition about the Emperor 
Frederick der Rothbart, and the Kypphauser mountain: the subjoined 
note, however, which he had appended to the tale, shows that it is an eeo 
absolute fact, narrated- with his usual fidelity: 

"The story of Rip Van Winkle may seem incredible to many, but 
nevertheless I give it my full belief, for I know the vicinity of our 
old Dutch settlements to have been very subject to marvelous events 
and appearances. Indeed, I have heard many stranger stories than ees 
this, in the villages along the Hudson; all of which were too well authen- 
ticated to admit of a doubt. I have even talked with Rip Van Winkle 
myself, who, when last I saw him, was a very venerable old man, and 
so perfectly rational and consistent on every other point, that I think 
no conscientious person could refuse to take this into the bargain; nay, 670 
I have seen a certificate on the subject taken before a country justice, 
and signed with a cross, in the justice's own handwriting. The story, 
therefore, is beyond the possibility of doubt. 

D. K." 

POSTSCRIPT 

The following are traveling notes from a memorandum-book of 675 
Mr. Knickerbocker: 

The Kaatsberg, or Catskill Mountains, have always been a region 
full of fable. The Indians considered them the abode of spirits, who 
influenced the weather, spreading sunshine or clouds over the landscape, 
and sending good or bad hunting seasons. They were ruled by an old eo 
squaw spirit, said to be their mother. She dwelt on the highest peak of 
the Catskills, and had charge of the doors of day and night to open and 
shut them at the proper hour. She hung up the new moons in the skies, 
and cut up the old ones into stars. In times of drought, if properly 
propitiated, she would spin light summer clouds out of cobwebs and ®** 
morning dew, and send them off from the crest of the mountain, flake 
after flake, like flakes of carded cotton, to float in the air: until, dis- 
solved by the heat of the sun, they would fall in gentle showers, causing 
the grass to spring, the fruits to ripen, and the com to grow an inch an 
hour. If displeased, however, she would brew up clouds black as ink, 69o 
sitting in the midst of them like a bottle-bellied spider in the midst of 
its web; and when these clouds broke, wo betide the valleys! 

In old times, say the Indian traditions, there was a kind of Manitou 
or Spirit, who kept about the wildest recesses of the Catskill Mountains, 



26 American Literary Readings 

695and took a mischievous pleasure in wreaking all kinds of evils and 
vexations upon the red men. Sometimes he would assume the form of 
a bear, a panther, or a deer, lead the bewildered hunter a weary chase 
through tangled forests and among ragged rocks; and then spring off 
with a loud ho! ho! leaving him aghast on the brink of a beetling preci- 

700pice or raging torrent. 

The favorite abode of this Manitou is still shown. It is a great 
rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and, from the flower- 
ing vigies which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound 
in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near 

705the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with 
water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies, which 
lie on the surface. This place was held in great awe by the Indians, 

■ insomuch that the boldest hunter would not pursue his game within its 
precincts. Once upon a time, however, a hunter who had lost his 

7 10 way, penetrated to the garden rock, where he beheld a number of 
gourds placed in the crotches of trees. One of these he seized and made 
off with it, but in the hurry of his retreat he let it fall among the rocks, 
when a great stream gushed forth, -which washed him away and swept 
him down precipices, where he was dashed to pieces, and the stream 

7i5made its way to the Hudson, and continues to flow to the present day; 
being the identical stream. known by the name of the Kaaters-kill. 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

When I behold, with deep astonishment, 

To famous Westminster how there resorte 

Living in brasse or stoney monument. 

The princes and the worthies of all sorte; 

Doe not I see reformde nobilitie. 

Without contempt, or pride, or ostentation. 

And looke upon offenselesse majesty. 

Naked of pomp or earthly domination? 

And how a play-game of a painted stone 

Contents the quiet now and silent sprites, 

Whome all the world which late they stood upon 

Could not content nor quench their appetites. 
Life is a frost of cold felicitie. 
And death the thaw of all our vanitie. 

Christolero's Epigrams, by T. B. 1598. 

On one of those sober and rather melancholy days, in the 
latter part of Autumn, when the shadows of morning and 
evening almost mingle together, and throw a gloom over the 
decline of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about 
5 Westminster Abbey. There was something congenial to the 
season in the mournful magnificence of the old pile; and, as I 



Westminster Abbey . 27 

passed its threshold, seemed like stepping back into the re- 
gions of antiquity, and losing myself among the shades of 
former ages. 

I entered from the inner court of Westminster School, 10 
through a long, low, vaulted passage, that had an almost 
subterranean look, being dimly lighted in one part by circular 
perforations in the massive walls. Through this dark 
avenue I had a distant view of the cloisters, with the figure 
of an old verger, in his black gown, moving along their 15 
shadowy vaults, and seeming like a spectre from one of the 
neighboring tombs. 

The approach to the abbey through these gloomy monastic 
remains prepares the mind for its solemn contemplation. 
The cloisters still retain something of the quiet and seclusion 20 
of former days. The gray walls are discolored by damps, and 
crumbling with age ; a coat of hoary moss has gathered over 
the inscriptions of the mural monuments, and obscured the 
death's heads, and other funereal emblems. The sharp 
touches of the chisel are gone from the rich tracery of the 25 
arches; the roses which adorned the key-stones have lost their 
leafy beauty ; every thing bears marks of the gradual dilapi- 
dations of time, which yet has something touching and 
pleasing in its very decay. 

The sun was pouring down a yellow autiminal ray into the 30 
square of the cloisters; beaming upon a scanty plot of grass 
in the centre, and lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage 
with a kind of dusky splendor. From between the arcades, 
the eye glanced up to a bit of blue sky or a passing cloud ; and 
beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey towering into the 35 
azure heaven. 

As I paced the cloisters, sometimes contemplating this 
mingled picture of glory and decay, and sometimes endeav- 
oring to decipher the inscriptions on the tombstones, which 
formed the pavement beneath my feet, my eye was attracted 40 
to three figures, rudely carved in relief, but nearly worn away 
by the footsteps of many generations. They were the effigies 



28 American Literary Readings 

of three of the early abbots; the epitaphs were entirely 
effaced; the names alone remained, having no doubt been 

45 renewed in later times. (Vitalis. Abbas. 1082, and Gisle- 
bertus Crispinus. Abbas. 11 14, and Laurentius. Abbas. 
1 1 76.) I remained some little while, musing over these 
casual relics of antiquity, thus left like wrecks upon this dis- 
tant shore of time, telling no tale but that such beings had 

50 been and had perished; teaching no moral but the futility 
of that pride which hopes still to exact homage in its ashes, 
and to live in an inscription. A little longer, and even these 
faint records will be obliterated, and the monument will 
cease to be a memorial. Whilst I was yet looking down upon 

55 these gravestones, I was roused by the sound of the abbey 
clock, reverberating from buttress to buttress, and echoing 
among the cloisters. It is almost startling to hear this 
warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and 
telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled 

60 us onward towards the grave. 

I pursued my walk to an arched door opening to the 
interior of the abbey. On entering here, the magnitude of 
the building breaks fully upon the mind, contrasted with the 
vaults of the cloisters. The eyes gaze with wonder at 

65 clustered colimms of gigantic dimensions, with arches spring- 
ing from them to such an amazing height; and man wan- 
dering about their bases, shrunk into insignificance in 
comparison with his own handiwork. The spaciousness and 
gloom of this vast edifice produce a profound and mys- 

70 terious awe. We step cautiously and softly about, as if 
fearful of disturbing the hallowed silence of the tomb ; while 
every footfall whispers along the walls, and chatters among 
the sepulchres, making us more sensible of the quiet we have 
interrupted. 

75 It seems as if the awful nature of the place presses 
down upon the soul, and hushes the beholder into noiseless 
reverence. We feel that we are surrounded by the congre- 
gated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled 



Westminster Abbey 29 

history with their deeds, and the earth with their renown. 

And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human so 
ambition, to see how they are crowded together and jostled in 
the dust ; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty 
nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those, 
whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy; and how 
many shapes, and forms, and artifices, are devised to catch ss 
the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetful- 
ness, for a few short years, a name which once aspired to 
occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration. 

I passed some time in Poet's Corner, which occupies an 
end of one of the transepts or cross aisles of the abbey. The 90 
monuments are generally simple; for the lives of literary 
men afford no striking themes for the sculptor. Shakspeare 
and Addison have statues erected to their memories ; but the 
greater part have busts, medallions, and sometimes mere 
inscriptions. Notwithstanding the simplicity of these 95 
memorials, I have always observed that the visitors to the 
abbey remained longest about them. A kinder and fonder 
feeling takes place of that cold curiosity or vague admiration 
with which they gaze on the splendid monuments of the 
great and the heroic. They linger about these as about the 100 
tombs of friends and companions; for indeed there is some- 
thing of companionship between the author and the reader. 
Other men are known to posterity only through the mediimi 
of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure: 
but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men 105 
is ever new, active, and immediate. He has lived for them 
more than for himself; he has sacrificed surrounding enjoy- 
ments, and shut himself up from the delights of social life, 
that lie might the more intimately commune with distant 
minds and distant ages. Well may the world cherish his no 
renown; for it has been purchased, not by deeds of violence 
and blood, but by the diligent dispensation of pleasure. 
Well may posterity be grateful to his memory; for he has 
left it an inheritance, not of empty names and sounding 



30 American Literary Readings 

115 actions, but whole treasures of wisdom, bright gems of 
thought, and golden veins of language. 

From Poet's Comer I continued my stroll towards that 
part of the abbey which contains the sepulchres of the 
kings. I wandered among what once were chapels, but 

120 which are now occupied by the tombs and monuments of 
the great. At every turn, I met with some illustrious name; 
or the cognizance of some powerful house renowned in his- 
tory. As the eye darts into these dusky chambers of death, 
it catches glimpses of quaint eflgies; some kneeling in 

125 niches, as if in devotion; others stretched upon the tombs, 
with hands piously pressed together: warriors in armor, as 
if reposing after battle; prelates with crosiers and mitres; 
and nobles in robes and coronets, lying as it were in state. 
In glancing over this scene, so strangely populous, yet 

130 where every form is so still and silent, it seems almost as 
if we were treading a mansion of that fabled city, where 
every being had been suddenly transmuted into stone. 

I paused to contemplate a tomb on which lay the.efhgy of 
a knight in complete armor. A large buckler was on one 

135 arm; the hands were pressed together in supphcation upon 
the breast : the face was almost covered by the morion ; the 
legs were crossed, in token of the warrior's having been 
engaged in the holy war. It was the tomb of a crusader; of 
one of those military enthusiasts, who so strangely mingled 

140 religion and romance, and whose exploits form the connecting 
link between fact and fiction; between the history and the 
fairy tale. There is something extremely picturesque in 
the tombs of these adventurers, decorated as they are with 
rude armorial bearings and Gothic sculpture. They comport 

145 with the antiquated chapels in which they are generally 
found; and in considering them, the imagination is apt to 
kindle with the legendary associations, the romantic fiction, 
the chivalrous pomp and pageantry, which poetry has spread 
over the wars for the sepulchre of Christ. They are the 

150 relics of times utterly gone by; of beings passed from 



Westminster Abbey 31 

recollection; of customs and manners with which ours have 
no affinity. They are like objects from some strange and 
distant land, of which we have no certain knowledge, and 
about which all our conceptions are vague and visionary. 
There is something extremely solemn and awful in those 155 
effigies on Gothic tombs, extended as if in the sleep of death, 
or in the supplication of the dying hour. They have an effect 
infinitely more impressive on my feelings than the fanciful 
attitudes, the over-wrought conceits, and allegorical groups, 
which abound on modem monuments. I have been struck, leo 
also, with the superiority of many of the old sepulchral 
inscriptions. There was a noble way, in former times, of 
saying things simply, and yet saying them proudly; and I 
do not know an epitaph that breathes a loftier consciousness 
of family worth and honorable lineage, than one which los 
affirms, of a noble house, that "all the brothers were brave, 
and all the sisters virtuous." 

In the opposite transept to Poet's Comer stands a monu- 
ment which is among the most renowned achievements of 
modern art; but which to me appears horrible rather than 170 
sublime. It is the tomb of Mrs. Nightingale, by Roubillac. 
The bottom of the monument is represented as throwing 
open its marble doors, and a sheeted skeleton is starting forth. 
The shroud is falling from his fleshless frame as he launches 
his dart at his victim. She is sinking into her affrighted 175 
husband's arms, who strives, with vain and frantic effort, to 
avert the blow. The whole is executed with terrible truth 
and spirit; we almost fancy we hear the gibbering yell of 
trivmiph bursting from the distended jaws of the spectre. — 
But why should we thus seek to clothe death with unneces- iso 
sary terrors, and to spread horrors round the tomb of those 
we love? The grave should be surrounded by every thing 
that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead; 
or that might win the living to virtue. It is the place, 
not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation, iss 

While wandering about these gloomy vaults and silent 



32 American Literary Readings 

aisles, studying the records of the dead, the sound of busy 
existence from without occasionally reaches the ear; — the 
rumbling of the passing equipage; the murmur of the multi- 

190 tude; or perhaps the light laugh of pleasure. The contrast 
is striking with the deathlike repose around: and it has a 
strange effect upon the feelings, thus to hear the surges of 
active life hurrying along, and beating against the very walls 
of the sepulchre. 

195 I continued in this way to move from tomb to tomb, and 
from chapel to chapel. The day was gradually wearing 
away; the distant tread of loiterers about the abbey grew 
less and less frequent; the sweet-tongued bell was siim- 
moning to evening prayers; and I saw at a distance the 

200 choristers, in their white surplices, crossing the aisle and 
entering the choir. I stood before the entrance to Henry 
the Seventh's chapel. A flight of steps lead up to it, through 
a deep and gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of 
brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their 

205 hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common 
mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres. 

On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architec- 
ture, and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very 
walls are wrought into universal ornament, incrusted with 

210 tracery, and scooped into niches, crowded with the statues 
of saints and martyrs. Stone seems, by the cunning labor of 
the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, 
suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved 
with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. 

215 Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the 
Knights of the Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the 
grotesque decorations of Gothic architecture. On the pin- 
nacles of the stalls are affixed the helmets and crests of the 
knights, with their scarfs and swords; and above thern are 

220 suspended their banners, emblazoned with armorial bearings, 
and contrasting the splendor of gold and purple and crimson, 
with the cold gray fretwork of the roof. In the midst of this 



Westminster Abbey 33 

grand mausoleum stands the sepulchre of its founder, — his 
effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous tomb, 
and the whole surrounded by a superbly-wrought brazen 225 
railing. 

There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence ; this strange 
mixture of tombs and trophies; these emblems of living and 
aspiring ambition, close beside mementos which show the 
dust and oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate. 230 
Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneli- 
ness, than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former 
throng and pageant. On looking round on the vacant stalls 
of the knights and their esquires, and on the rows of dusty 
but gorgeous banners that were once borne before them, my 235 
imagination conjured up the scene when this hall was bright 
with the valor and beauty of the land; glittering with the 
splendor of jeweled rank and military array; alive with the 
tread of many feet and the hum of an admiring multitude. 
All had passed away; the silence of death had settled again 240 
upon the place, interrupted only by the casual chirping of 
birds, which had found their way into the chapel, and built 
their nests among its friezes and pendants — sure signs of 
solitariness and desertion. 

When I read the names inscribed on the banners, they 245 
were those of men scattered far and wide about the world; 
some tossing upon distant seas ; some under arms in distant 
lands; some mingling in the busy intrigues of courts and 
cabinets; all seeking to deserve one more distinction in this 
mansion of shadowy honors: the melancholy reward of a 250 
monument. 

Two small aisles on each side of this chapel present a 
touching instance of the equality of the grave ; which brings 
down the oppressor to a level with the oppressed, and mingles 
the dust of the bitterest enemies together. In one is the 255 
sepulchre of the haughty Elizabeth ; in the other is that of her 
victim, the lovely and unfortunate Mary. Not an hour in 
the day but some ejaculation of pity is uttered over the fate 



34 American Literary Readings 

of the latter, mingled with indignation at her oppressor. 

260 The walls of Elizabeth's sepulchre continually echo with the 
sighs of sympathy heaved at the grave of her rival. 

A peculiar melancholy reigns over the aisle where Mary 
lies buried. The light struggles dimly through windows 
darkened by dust. The greater part of the place is in deep 

265 shadow, and the v/alls are stained and tinted by time and 
weather. A marble figure of Mary is stretched upon the 
tomb, round which is an iron railing, much corroded, bearing 
her national emblem — the thistle. I was weary with wander- 
ing, and sat down to rest myself by the moniunent, revolving 

270 in rny mind the chequered and disastrous story of poor Mary. 

The sound of casual footsteps had ceased from the abbey. 

I could only hear, now and then, the distant voice of the 

priest repeating the evening service, and the faint responses 

of the choir; these paused for a time, and all was hushed. 

275 The stillness, the desertion and obscurity that were gradually 

prevailing around, gave a deeper and more solemn interest 

to the place: 

For in the silent grave no conversation, 
No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, 
280 No careful father's counsel — nothing's heard, 

For nothing is, but all oblivion, 
Dust, and an endless darkness. 

Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon 
the ear, falling with doubled and redoubled intensity, and 

285 rolling, as it were, huge billows of sound. How well do their 
voliame and grandeur accord with this mighty building! 
With what pomp do they swell through its vast vaults, and 
breathe their awful harmony through these caves of death, 
and make the silent sepulchre vocal! — And now they rise in 

290 triumphant acclamation, heaving higher and higher their 
accordant notes, and piling sound on sound. — And now 
they pause, and the soft voices of the choir break out into 
sweet gushes of melody; they soar aloft, and warble along 
the roof, and seem to play about these lofty vaults like the 

235 pure airs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves its 



Westminster Abbey 35 

thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling 
it forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What 
solemn sweeping concords! It grows more and more dense 
and powerful — it fills the vast pile, and seems to jar the very 
walls ^ — the ear is stunned — the senses are overwhelmed. 300 
And now it is winding up in full jubilee — it is rising from the 
earth to heaven- — the very soul seems rapt away and floated 
upwards on this swelling tide of harmony! 

I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie which a 
strain of music is apt sometimes to inspire: the shadows of 305 
evening were gradually thickening round me; the monu- 
ments began to cast deeper and deeper gloom; and the 
distant clock again gave token of the slowly waning day. 

I rose and prepared to leave the abbey. As I descended 
the flight of steps which lead into the body of the building, 310 
my eye was caught by the shrine of Edward the Confessor, 
and I ascended the small staircase that conducts to it, to take 
from thence a general survey of this wilderness of tombs. 
The shrine is elevated upon a kind of platform, and close 
around it are the sepulchres of various kings and queens. 315 
From this eminence the eye looks down between pillars and 
funeral trophies to the chapels and chambers below, crowded 
with tombs; where warriors, prelates, courtiers, and states- 
men, lie mouldering in their "beds of darkness." Close by 
me stood the great chair of coronation, rudely carved of oak, 320 
in the barbarous taste of a remote and Gothic age. The 
scene seemed almost as if contrived, with theatrical artifice, 
to produce an effect upon the beholder. Here was a type of 
the beginning and the end of htmian pomp and power; here 
it was literally but a step from the throne to the sepulchre. 325 
Would not one think that these incongruous mementos had 
been gathered together as a lesson to living greatness? — to 
show it, even in the moment of its proudest exaltation, the 
neglect and dishonor to which it must soon arrive ; how soon 
that crown which encircles its brow must pass away, and it 330 
must lie down in the dust and disgraces of the tomb, and be 



36 American Literary Readings 

trampled upon by the feet of the meanest of the multitude. 
For, strange to tell, even the grave is here no longer a sanctu- 
ary. There is a shocking levity in some natures, which leads 

335 them to sport with awful and hallowed things; and there are 
base minds, which delight to revenge on the illustrious dead 
the abject homage and groveling servility which they pay to 
the living. The coffin of Edward the Confessor has been 
broken open, and his remains despoiled of their funereal 

340 ornaments; the sceptre has been stolen from the hand of 
the imperious Elizabeth, and the efhgy of Henry the Fifth 
lies headless. Not a royal monument but bears some proof 
how false and fugitive is the homage of mankind. Some are 
plundered ; some mutilated ; some covered with ribaldry and 

345 insult — ^all more or less outraged and dishonored! 

The last beams of day were now faintly streaming through 
the painted windows in the high vaults above me ; the lower 
parts of the abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of 
twilight. The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. 

350 The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the marble 
figures of the monirments assimied strange shapes in the 
uncertain light; the evening breeze crept through the aisles 
like the cold breath of the grave ; and even the distant footfall 
of a verger, traversing the Poet's Corner, had something 

355 strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my 
morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the 
cloisters, the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, 
filled the whole building with echoes. 

I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of 

360 the objects I had been contemplating, but found they were 
already fallen into indistinctness and confusion. Names, 
inscriptions, trophies, had all become confounded in my 
recollection, though I had scarcely taken my foot from off 
the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assemblage 

365 of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation; a huge pile of 
reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown, and the 
certainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the empire of death; 



Westminster Abbey 37 

his great shadowy palace, where he sits in state, mocking 
at the reHcs of human glory, and spreading dust and forget- 
fulness on the monuments of princes. How idle a boast, 370 
after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever 
silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed 
by the story of the present, to think of the characters and 
anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a 
volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol 375 
of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection ; 
and will, in tiun, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow. 
"Our fathers," says Sir Thomas Brown, "find their graves 
in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be 
buried in our survivors." History fades into fable; fact 38o 
becomes clouded with doubt and controversy ; the inscription 
moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. 
Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; 
and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust ? What 
is the security of a tomb, or the perpetuity of an embalm- ass 
ment ? The remains of Alexander the Great have been scat- 
tered to the wind, and his empty sarcophagus is now the mere 
curiosity of a museum. "The Egyptian mummies, which 
Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth; 
Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams." 399 

What then is to insure this pile which now towers above 
me from sharing the fate of mightier mausoleums? The 
time must come when its gilded vaults, which now spring 
so loftily, shall lie in rubbish beneath the feet; when, instead 
of the sound of melody and praise, the wind shall whistle 395 
through the broken arches, and the owl hoot from the 
shattered tower — when the garish sunbeam shall break into 
these gloomy mansions of death, and the ivy twine round 
the fallen column ; and the fox-glove hang its blossoms about 
the nameless urn, as if in mockery of the dead. Thus man 400 
passes away ; his name perishes from record and recollection ; 
his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument 
becomes a ruin. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

1789-1851 

Almost since his very first appearance as an author James 
Fenimore Cooper has been called "The American Scott," 
but as Lowell long ago intimated, the comparison is much 
to the American author's disadvantage. It is true that 
Scott was the inspiration of some of the best of Cooper's 
creative work, and it is also true that there is a certain 
similarity between these authors in their love of outdoor life, 
adventure, and exciting action ; in largeness and sweep rather 
than delicacy and finish of style; and in the final effects of 
their romances on the imagination of their readers. But 
in his power of reproducing past ages of history, in his 
wonderful array of original character creations, and in the 
architectural completeness and final artistic charm of his 
romances, Scott far and away surpasses his American 
follower. 

Cooper is undoubtedly the most uneven of our greater 
writers. He has done some things wonderfully well, but he 
has also produced some books of exceedingly little worth. 
Along with his excellences he displays so many conspicuous 
faults as a stylist that there are some modern critics who 
feel inclined even to deny him a place among the major 
writers of America. It is true that his grammar is not 
always correct, that his diction is sometimes turgid and 
bombastic, and that there are many evidences of weakness - 
in the architectonics, or structural elements, in his stories. 
It is also true that there is a lack of consistency, probability, 
and realism in his plots, and no one will deny that the 
majority of his characters, particularly his faultless "fe- 
males," are more wooden and artificial than real flesh-and- 
blood men and women. Still, when we consider the richness 
of Cooper's invention, the beauty, sweep, and power of 
his natural backgrounds, the energ}^ displayed in his few 
great character creations, the originality and intense Ameri- 
canism of his major conceptions, and the interest-gripping 
power of his most successful tales, we must inevitably accept 

[38] 




JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 



James Fenimore Cooper 39 

him not only as one of our pioneer writers but as one of our 
largest creative geniuses. 

The eleventh of the twelve children of William Cooper and 
Elizabeth Fenimore was born at Burlington, New Jersey, 
September 15, 1789, and christened James. After he had 
reached maturity, by an act of the New York legislature he 
assumed his mother's maiden name and has ever since been 
known as James Fenimore Cooper. Judge William Cooper 
owned a large estate on the shores of Otsego Lake in central 
New York, and when James was about a year old, he moved 
into a large manor which he had built in the dense forests of 
his estate and named it "The Hall." Here at what has since 
become Cooperstown the boy grew up and became familiarly 
acquainted with those wild, free scenes of the primeval 
wilderness which he was later to people with its aboriginal 
denizens, the creations of his own imagination it is true, but 
based on actual observation of Indian and pioneer life as it 
was impressed on his childhood's memory. There was but 
little opportunity for formal education in this undeveloped 
territory, and so Judge Cooper sent his children to the more 
thickly populated settlements for their schooling. James 
was sent to Albany for a year to be tutored for college. 
With a very inadequate preparation he entered Yale at the 
early age of thirteen. He apparently paid little attention to 
his academic duties, and in his third year he was dismissed 
from the college. It is unfortunate that Cooper did not 
complete his education, for his style might have been greatly 
chastened and refined if he had submitted to the discipline 
of a careful literary training in his youth. Even after he left 
college he might have improved his style by practice and 
self-criticism if he had begun early enough; but he was past 
thirty when he began to write, and so he was never able to 
overcome fully the handicap of his youthful neglect of educa- 
tional opportunities. 

Judge Cooper, now a congressman, looked upon the navy 
as offering a promising career and certainly a good disciplin- 
ary training for his independent, self-willed, and adventurous 
son. Accordingly, at the time of the boy's dismissal from 
Yale he secured a post for him on a merchantman and sent 
him to sea. This was the method of preliminary training 
for officers of the navy in the days before the founding of the 
naval academy at Annapolis. For nearly a year the young 
sailor stood the tests before the mast, traveling through the 



40 American Literary Readings 

Straits of Gibraltar to Spain, returning by way of London, 
and crossing the Atlantic with all the experiences of storms, 
hardships, and excitements of those early days of pirates 
and freebooters. He then became a midshipman in the 
United States Navy, and for three years passed his life on 
board various ships, mostly on the Great Lakes, but also 
crossing the Atlantic in a visit to foreign ports. Of these 
early sea experiences we learn more from Cooper's sea tales 
than from any authentic records of his life during this period. 

In 1810 Cooper secured a year's leave of absence from the 
navy with the privilege of retiring permanently if he so de- 
sired. In 181 1, having in the meantime married Miss Susan 
De Lancey, he resigned his commission and for the next ten 
years lived the life of a farmer, or country gentleman, on his 
father's and his father-in-law's estates. It was about 1820 
that the interesting episode occurred which turned Cooper's 
life into literary channels. While reading a novel of English 
society life to his wife, he suddenly threw down the book in 
disgust, exclaiming that he could write a better novel him- 
self. His wife challenged him to make good his boast, and 
under her encouragement Cooper produced within a short 
time a two- volume novel. Precaution, a book which was a 
failure in everything except that it showed Cooper he really 
had a gift for writing. He knew little or nothing of English 
society, and so, as might have been foreseen, he did not 
succeed in portraying it. But when his friends encouraged 
him to try again, he turned in his next venture to an Ameri- 
can subject and American scenery, and produced The Spy, 
the first widely successful American novel. 

Cooper's stories may be conveniently treated in three 
classes: (i) his historical tales, best represented by The 
Spy; (2) his sea tales, best represented by The Pilot; and 
(3) the stories of Indian and pioneer life in the colonial 
days, best represented by the Leatherstocking Tales. 

It was in 182 1 that, with some hesitancy and at his own 
financial risk. Cooper published his first important novel, 
The Spy. It is a tale of the Revolution, based upon the 
romantic exploits of the spy, Harvey Birch, a secret agent 
in the confidence of Washington, but a man thoroughly 
hated and distrusted by the American patriots. His mar- 
velous adventures in the war, his intrepid and sometimes 
reckless unconcern for his own safety, his astuteness and 
agility in extricating himself from perilous situations and 



James Fenimore Cooper 41 

all kinds of difficulties, his mysterious mission, his charmed 
life, and his unswerving patriotism and loyalty to the 
American cause make Harvey Birch one of the prime favor- 
ites in the gallery of American fictitious characters. So 
realistically are his adventures described that several persons 
have claimed to be the original from which the character 
was drawn, and not a few readers, even to this day, are con- 
vinced that Harvey Birch is a historical character. The 
Spy was not only widely read in America and England, but 
it was almost immediately translated into every important 
foreign language and read with delight by practically every 
court and capital of the world. Just as Lord Byron by his 
poetical romances is said to have carried English literature 
on a pilgrimage through Europe, so James Fenimore Cooper 
may be said to be the first American writer of fiction to have 
gained a cosmopolitan hearing. Irving's Sketch Book had 
blazed the way, particularly to English favor, but Cooper 
extended the path to every civilized country of Europe. Had 
Cooper written nothing else, The Spy alone is enough to 
give him a place in the roll of American novelists. Its 
popularity has never waned and it is perhaps true that this 
thrilling romance has as many readers to-day as it had 
during its first years of popular favor. The other historical 
tales by Cooper are so far inferior to this one that they hardly 
deserve to be mentioned. 

The next book which Cooper published was The Pioneers 
(1823), the first of the famous Leatherstocking Tales. But 
before taking up these, we shall consider another group of 
stories introduced by The Pilot, written in this same year 
but not published until so late in December that it is usually 
dated 1824. This was not only the first significant Ameri- 
can sea tale, but in reality the first distinctively successful 
sea story in English literature. Smollett had first shown 
the possibilities of the sea as a new realm for romancers to 
conquer, but he had attracted few or no adventurers to 
follow him. Sir Walter Scott had just published The 
Pirate, a tale in which the* sea naturally becomes prominent. 
On reading Scott's novel, which had been published anony- 
mously, Cooper insisted that it was written by a landsman 
who knew very little about the sea from actual experience. 
His own experience in early life gave him peculiar advantages 
for the task which he now set for himself ^ — namely, the 
writing of a book which should deal entirely with the ocean 



42 American Literary Readings 

and present real sailors and realistic events of a romantic 
character, so as to make the story a convincing presentation 
of life on the sea. The Pilot is based on the cruise of John 
Paul Jones, though nowhere in the story is the great Revolu- 
tionary sailor's name mentioned. It was a notable thing 
to introduce into a sea-tale such historical material, but still 
more notable was the creation of Long Tom Cofifin, the 
rough, uncouth, superstitious, but faithful, honest, and loyal 
old tar. He stands with Harvey Birch, Natty Bumppo, 
and Chingachgook as one of the four greatest characters 
produced by Cooper's imagination. Cooper followed this 
first success in the romance of the sea by nine other sea 
tales, but it is hardly worth while recording the names of 
any of these except The Red Rover (1828) and The Two 
Admirals (1842). 

The publication of the three great novels The Spy, The 
Pioneers, and The Pilot between 182 1 and 1824 had given 
Cooper's name to the world, but it was in 1826 that he 
reached the very acme of. his fame by the publication of the 
second and the best of the Leatherstocking Tales, The Last 
of the Mohicans. It has been confidently asserted that no 
American before or since has reached the world-wide popu- 
larity which he enjoyed at this time. Since 1822 he had 
been living in New York City to obtain educational advan- 
tages for his daughters and to be at the literary center of 
the country.* He founded a club and was its acknowledged 
leader for several years. In fact, he was now something of 
a literary lion, and he felt distinctly the importance of his 
position as the most popular writer of his day. The poet 
Bryant in reporting a dinner to his wife wrote that Cooper 
"engrossed the whole conversation, and seems a little giddy 
with the great success his works have met with." 

The scene of The Last of the Mohicans is the well-known 
wilderness of central New York where Cooper had spent 
his childhood. The conflict between the French and the 
English for the supremacy in America forms the historical 
background, and the vast forests 'and rivers and lakes the 
natural setting of the series of thrilling episodes which 
constitute the plot. Natty Bumppo, the famous scout, 
previously introduced as Leatherstocking in The Pioneers, 
is here presented in the prime of life and called Hawk-eye 
after the Indians' manner of designation. His friend 
Chingachgook, the stolid old Mohican chieftain, and the 



James Fenimore Cooper 43 

lithe and athletic Uncas, sorrowfully called by Chingach- 
gook "The Last of the Mohicans," and Magua, the treacher- 
ous Indian runner, a member of the Mohawk tribe and an 
enemy of the Mohicans, are among the chief character 
creations worthy of remembrance in this stirring romance of 
pioneer days in the American colonies. 

The best sequence in which to read the five Leatherstock- 
ing Tales now is not in the order in which they were written 
but that in which the life of Natty Bumppo is presented 
chronologically in a sort of "drama in five acts." The 
Deer slayer (1841) shows the scout just merging into man- 
hood; The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and The Pathfinder 
(1840) show him in the full vigor of middle life; The Pioneers 
(1823) presents him as already an old man, and in The 
Prairie (1827) his career terminates when he answers ' ' Here ! ' ' 
to the last summons. Thus this heroic figure, the one great 
epic character in our literature, is fully drawn in these five 
romances. By common consent the series is now looked 
upon as America's greatest prose epic. Natty Bumppo, 
no matter by which of his four or five pseudonyms you call 
him, is undoubtedly one of the world's chief fictive charac- 
ters. It is perhaps not so much as a personality as the repre- 
sentative of a vanished era in American history that he is 
revered. No matter how idealized the characters in these 
books may be, no matter how improbable the romantic 
adventures described, no matter how inaccurate and incon- 
sistent in minor details of plot and style, the Leather- 
stocking Tales make up the truest epic of our early colonial 
life that the world possesses, and this great imaginative crea- 
tion will undoubtedly hold its place in the public regard long 
after all else that Cooper wrote shall have been forgotten. 

In 1826 Cooper, in the full flush of his popularity, went 
abroad with his family and remained for seven years in 
several of the European countries. During these years 
he began to write himself down almost as speedily as he had 
written himself up in the public regard. It is true that 
some of his great books were yet to be given to the world, but 
in the assumed r.Je of defender of democratic institutions 
at all hazards, he soon won a number of enemies in aristo- 
cratic Europe; and on his return to America, having now 
been abroad long enough to recognize the shortcomings of 
his countrymen, he undertook the thankless task of reform- 
ing the nation by openly quarreling with it and castigating 



44 American Literary Readings 

its follies. The result was that he became as severely hated 
as he had been previously extravagantly praised. There 
is no doubt now, after the lapse of many years, that Cooper 
was at heart a loyal and devoted patriot, kind and tender 
in his family and personal relations, unswerving in his 
honesty, but unrelenting in his prosecution of what appeared 
to him as ignorance and injustice. He was lacking in tact 
and grace and diplomacy in dealing with individuals and 
the public, and hence he was an adept in what has been 
called "the gentle art of making enemies." 

The result was that he was mercilessly attacked in the 
press, and he promptly retorted by suing for libel every 
paper in which he had been lampooned. He had a dozen 
or more of these suits during this period, and almost invari- 
ably he conducted his own cases and won favorable verdicts. 
This soon brought his detractors to their senses, and he was 
thereafter less violently assailed in the public prints, but 
no less violently condemned in private. Naturally these 
contests embittered Cooper's later years and prevented him 
from advancing steadily in his creative work. He wrote 
some books that are still valued both as literary productions 
and as historical documents. His History of the United 
States Navy (1839), for example, was condemned as a 
partisan document at the time, but it is now recognized 
as one of the important contributions to the history of our 
navy. For the most part, however. Cooper gave over his 
talents to the writing of severe criticisms and purpose 
novels, first espousing one cause and then another. His 
reputation brought him many readers for each new book, 
but the public soon learned to discredit these later produc- 
tions, and to-day everybody realizes that it would have 
been much better for Cooper's fame if he had left unwritten 
at least two thirds of the thirty-two separate novels which 
he published. 

Cooper finally retired from New York City, and made 
his permanent home at "The Hall" on Otsego Lake, near 
Cooperstown. Here he died, September 14, 185 1, having 
rounded out to the day his sixty-second year. He was a 
brave, bold fighter and in many ways a good and worthy 
man; but he would have been much happier if he had won 
the love and respect rather than the distrust and enmity of 
his contemporaries. At his death a few of his friends in 
New York City, realizing his great service to American 



James Fenimore Cooper 45 

letters, held a memorial service at which Daniel Webster 
and William Cullen Bryant delivered orations. There has 
never been a time since his death that Cooper's best stories 
have not had thousands of readers annually. Novels that 
have already lasted practically a century are more than 
likely destined to hold their place indefinitely. 

(The standard life of Cooper is that by T. R. Lounsbury in the 
American Men of Letters Series.) 



THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS 
CHAPTER III, HAWK-EYE, CHINGACHGOOK, AND UNCAS 

Before these fields were shorn and till'd, 

Full to the brim our rivers flow'd; 
The melody of waters fill'd 

The fresh and boundless wood; 
And torrents dash'd, and rivulets play'd. 

And fountains spouted in the shade. 

Bryant 

Leaving the unsuspecting Heyward and his confiding 

companions to penetrate still deeper into a forest that 

contained such treacherous inmates, we must use an author's 

privilege, and shift the scene a few miles to the westward 

5 of the place where we have last seen them. 

On that day, two men were lingering on the banks of a 
small but rapid stream, within an hour's journey of the 
encampment of Webb, like those who awaited the appear- 
ance of an ^.bsent person, or the approach of some expected 

10 event. The vast canopy of woods spread itself to the 
margin of the river, overhanging the water, and shadowing 
its dark current with a deeper hue. The rays of the sun 
were beginning to grow less fierce, and the intense heat of 
the day was lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs 

15 and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the 
atmosphere. Still that breathing silence, which marks 
the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, 
pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low 
voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woDd- 

20 pecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling 
on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant water fall. 

These feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar 
to the foresters, to draw their attention from the more 
interesting matter of their dialogue. While one of these 

25 loiterers showed the red skin and wild accoutrements of a 

[46] 



The Last of the Mohicans 47 

native of the woods, the other exhibited, through the mask 
of his rude and nearly savage equipments, the brighter, 
though sun-burnt and long-faded complexion of one who 
might claim descent from a European parentage. The 
former was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a posture 30 
that permitted him to heighten the effect of his earnest 
language, by the calm but expressive gestures of an Indian 
engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, 
presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled 
colors of white and black. His closely shaved head, on 35 
which no other hair than the well known and chivalrous 
scalping tuft was preserved, was without ornament of any 
kind, with the exception of a solitary eagle's plume, that 
crossed his crown, and depended over the left shoulder. A 
tomahawk and scalping-knife, of English manufacture, 40 
w;ere in his girdle; while a short military rifle, of that sort 
with which the policy of the whites armed their savage 
allies, lay carelessly across his bare and sinewy knee. The 
expanded chest, full formed limbs, and grave countenance 
of this warrior would denote that he had reached the vigor 45 
of his days, though no symptoms of decay appeared to have 
yet weakened his manhood. 

The frame of the white man, judging by such parts as were 
not concealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had 
known hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His so 
person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full; 
but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated 
by unremitted exposure and toil. He wore a hunting-shirt 
of forest -green, fringed with faded yellow, and a siimmer 
cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur. He also ss 
bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like that which confined 
the scanty garments of the Indian, but no tomahawk. His 
moccasins were ornamented after the gay fashion of the 
natives, while the only part of his under dress which appeared 
below the hunting frock, was a pair of buckskin leggings that eo 
laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the knees, 



48 American Literary Readings 

with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn completed 
his personal accoutrements, though a rifle of great length, 
which the theory of the more ingenious whites had taught 

65 them was the most dangerous of all fire-arms, leaned against 
a neighboring sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, 
whichever he might be, was small, quick, keen, and restless, 
roving while he spoke, on every side of him, as if in quest of 
game, or distrusting the sudden approach of some lurking 

70 enemy. Notwithstanding these symptoms of habitual sus- 
picion, his countenance was not only without guile, but, at 
the moment at which he is introduced, it was charged 
with an expression of sturdy honesty. 

"Even your traditions make the case in my favor, Chin- 

75 gachgook," he said, speaking in the tongue which was known 
to all the natives who formerly inhabited the country be- 
tween the Hudson and the Potomack, and of which we shall 
give a free translation for the benefit of the reader; endeavor- 
ing, at the same time, to preserve some of the peculiarities 

80 both of the individual and of the language. "Your fathers 
came from the setting sun, crossed the big river, fought the 
people of the country, and took the land; and mine came 
from the red sky of the morning, over the salt lake, and did 
their work much after the fashion that had been set them 

85 by yours; then let God judge the matter between us, and 
friends spare their words!" 

"My fathers fought with the naked red man!" returned 
the Indian, sternly, in the same language. "Is there no 
difference. Hawk-eye, between the stone-headed arrow of 

90 the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which you kill?" 

"There is reason in an Indian, though Nature has made 

him with a red skin!" said the white man, shaking his head 

like one oh whom such an appeal to his justice was not 

thrown away. For a moment he appeared to be conscious 

95 of having the worst of the argument, then, rallying again, 
he answered the objection of his antagonist in the best 
manner his limited information would allow: "I am no 



The Last of the Mohicans 49 

scholar, and I care not who knows it; but judging from 
what I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel hunts, of 
the sparks below, I should think a rifle in the hands of lou 
their grandfathers was not so dangerous as a hickory bow 
and a good flint-head might be, if drawn with Indian judg- 
ment, and sent by an Indian eye." 

"You have the story told by your fathers," returned the 
other, coldly waving his hand. "What say your old men? 105 
do they tell the young warriors, that the pale-faces met 
the red men, painted for war and armed with the stone 
hatchet and wooden gun?" 

"I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts him- 
self on his natural privileges, though the worst enemy I have no 
on earth, and he is an Iroquois, dare n't deny that I am genuine 
white," the scout replied, surveying, with secret satisfaction, 
the faded color of his bony and sinewy hand; "and I am 
willing to own that my people have many ways, of which, 
as an honest man, I can't approve. It is one of their customs 115 
to write in books what they have done and seen, instead of 
telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to 
the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can 
call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his words. 
In consequence of this bad fashion, a man who is too consci- 120 
entious to misspend his days among the women, in learning 
the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his 
fathers, nor feel a pride in striving to outdo them. For my- 
self, I conclude all the Bumppos could shoot, for I have a 
natural turn with a rifle, which must have been handed down 125 
from generation to generation, as, our holy commandments 
tell us, all good and evil gifts are bestowed; though I should 
be loth to answer for other people in such a matter. But 
every story has its two sides: so I ask you, Chingachgook, 
what passed, according to the traditions of the red men, iso 
when our fathers first met?" 

A silence of a minute succeeded, during which the Indian 
sat mute; then, full of the dignity of his office, he commenced 

3 



50 American Literary Readings 

his brief tale, with a solemnity that served to heighten its 

135 appearance of truth. 

"Listen, Hawk-eye, and your ear shall drink no lie. 
'T is what my fathers have said, and what the Mohicans 
have done." He hesitated a single instant, and, bending 
a cautious glance towards his companion, he continued, in 

140 a manner that was divided between interrogation and asser- 
tion — "Does not this stream at our feet run towards the 
summer, until its waters grow salt, and the current flows 
upward?" 

"It can't be denied that your traditions tell you true in 

145 both these matters," said the white man; "for I have been 

there, and have seen them; though, why water, which is so 

sweet in the shade, should become bitter in the sun, is an 

alteration for which I have never been able to account." 

"And the current!" demanded the Indian, who expected 

150 his reply with that sort of interest that a man feels in the 

confirmation of testimony, at which he marvels even while 

he respects it; "the fathers of Chingachgook have not lied!" 

"The holy Bible is not more true, and that is the truest 

thing in Nature. They call this up-stream current the 

155 tide, which is a thing soon explained, and clear enough. 
Six hours the waters run in, and six hours they run out, 
and the reason is this: when there is higher water in the 
sea than in the river, they run in until the river gets to be 
highest, and then it runs out again." 

160 "The waters in the woods, and on the great lakes, run 
downward until they lie like my hand," said the Indian, 
stretching the limb horizontally before him, "and then 
they run no more." 

"No honest man will deny it," said the scout, a little 

165 nettled at the implied distrust of his explanation of the mystery 
of the tides: "and I grant that it is true on the small scale, 
and where the land is level. But everything depends on 
what scale you look at things. Now, on the small scale, 
the 'arth is level ; but on the large scale it is round. In this 



The Last of the Mohicans 51 

manner, pools and ponds, and even the great fresh-water no 
lakes, may be stagnant, as you and I both know they are, 
having seen them ; but when you come to spread water over 
a great tract, like the sea, where the earth is round, how in 
reason can the water be quiet? You might as well expect 
the river to lie still on the brink of those black rocks a mile 175 
above us, though your own ears tell you that it is tiimbling 
over them at this very moment!" 

If unsatisfied by the philosophy of his companion, the 
Indian was far too dignified to betray his unbelief. He 
listened like one who was convinced, and resimied his iso 
narrative in his former solemn manner. 

"We came from the place where the sun is hid at night, 
over great plains where the buffaloes live, until we reached 
the big river. There we fought the AUigewi till the ground 
was red with their blood. From the banks of the big river iss 
to the shores of the salt lake, there was none to meet us. 
The Maquas followed at a distance. We said the country 
should be ours from the place where the water runs up 
no longer on this stream to a river twenty suns' journey 
towards the stmimer. The land we had taken like warriors 190 
we kept like men. We drove the Maquas into the woods 
with the bears. They only tasted salt at the licks; they 
drew no fish from the great lake: we threw them the bones." 

"All this I have heard and believe," said the white man, 
observing that the Indian paused: "but it was long before 195 
the English came into the country." 

"A pine grew then where this chestnut now stands. 
The first pale-faces who came among us spoke no English. 
They came in a large canoe, when my fathers had buried 
the tomahawk with the red men around them. Then, 200 
Hawk-eye," he continued, betraying his deep emotion, 
only by permitting his voice to fall to those low, guttural 
tones, which render his language, as spoken at times, so very 
musical; "then. Hawk-eye, we were one people, and we 
were happy. The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its deer, 205 



52 American Literary Readings 

and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us children; 
we worshipped the Great Spirit; and we kept the Maquas 
beyond the sound of our songs of triumph!" 

"Know you anything of your own family at that time?" 

210 demanded the white. "But you are a just man, for an 
Indian! and, as I suppose you hold their gifts, your fathers 
must have been brave warriors, and wise men at the 
council fire." 

"My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an 

215 unmixed man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where 
it must stay for ever. The Dutch landed, and gave my 
people the fire-water; they drank until the heavens and the 
earth seemed to meet, and they foolishly thought they had 
found the Great Spirit. Then they parted with their land. 

220 Foot by foot, they were driven back from the shores, until 
I, that am a chief and a Sagamore, have never seen the sun 
shine but through the trees, and have never visited the 
graves of my fathers!" 

"Graves bring solemn feelings over the mind," returned 

225 the scout, a good deal touched at the calm suffering of his com- 
panion; "and they often aid a man in his good intentions; 
though, for myself, I expect to leave my own bones unburied 
to bleach in the woods or to be torn asunder by the wolves. 
But where are to be found those of your race who came to 

230 their kin in the Delaware country, so many summers since?" 

"Where are the blossoms of those summers! — fallen, one 

by one: so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the 

land of spirits. I am on the hill-top, and must go down into 

the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there 

235 will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for 
my boy is the last of the Mohicans." 

"Uncas is here!" said another voice, in the same soft, 

guttural tones, near his elbow; "who speaks to Uncas?" 

The white man loosened his knife in his leathern sheath, 

240 and made an involuntary movement of the hand towards 
his rifle, at this sudden interruption; but the Indian sat 



The Last of the Mohicans 53 

composed, and without turning his head at the unex- 
pected sounds. 

At the next instant, a youthful warrior passed between 
them, with a noiseless step, and seated himself on the bank 245 
of the rapid stream. No exclamation of surprise escaped 
the father, nor was any question asked, or reply given, for 
several minutes; each appearing to await the moment when 
he might speak, without betraying womanish curiosity or 
childish impatience. The white man seemed to take counsel 250 
from their customs, and, relinquishing his grasp of the rifle, 
he also remained silent and reserved. At length Chingach- 
gook turned his eyes slowly towards his son and demanded — 

"Do the Maquas dare to leave the print of their moccasins 
in these woods?" 255 

"I have been on their trail," replied the young Indian, 
"and know that they number as many as the fingers of 
my two hands; but they lie hid like cowards." 

"The thieves are out-lying for scalps and plunder!" said 
the white man, whom we shall call Hawk-eye, after the 200 
manner of his companions. "That busy Frenchman, 
Montcalm, will send his spies into our very camp, but he 
will know what road we travel!" 

" 'Tis enough!" returned the father, glancing his eye 
towards the setting sun; "they shall be driven like deer from 265 
their bushes. Hawk-eye, let us eat to-night, and show the 
Maquas that we are men to-morrow." 

"I am as ready to do the one as the other: but to fight the 
Iroquois 'tis necessary to find the skulkers; and to eat, 'tis 
necessary to get the game — talk of the devil and he will come ; 270 
there is a pair of the biggest antlers I have seen this season 
moving the bushes below the hill! Now, Uncas," he con- 
tinued in a half whisper, and laughing with a kind of inward 
sound, like one who had learnt to be watchful, "I will bet 
my charger three times full of powder, against a foot of 275 
wampum, that I take him atwixt the eyes, and nearer to the 
right than to the left." 



54 American Literary Readings 

"It cannot be!'.' said the young Indian, springing to his 
feet with youthful eagerness; "all but the tips of his horns 
280 are hid!" 

"He 's a boy ! " said the white man, shaking his head while 

he spoke, and addressing the father. "Does he think 

when a hunter sees a part of the creatur' he can't tell where 

the rest of him should be!" 

285 Adjusting his rifle, he was about to make an exhibition 

of that skill, on which he so much valued himself, when the 

warrior struck up the piece with his hand, saying, 

"Hawk-eye! will you fight the Maquas?" 

"These Indians know the nature of the woods, as it 

290 might be by instinct!" returned the scout, dropping his 

rifle, and turning away like a man who was convinced of his 

error. "I must leave the buck to your arrow, Uncas, or we 

may kill a deer for them thieves, the Iroquois, to eat." 

The instant the father seconded this intimation by an 

295 expressive gesture of the head, Uncas threw himself on the 

ground and approached the animal with wary movements. 

When within a few yards of the cover, he fitted an arrow 

to his bow with the utmost care, while the antlers moved, 

as if their owner snuffed an enemy in the tainted air. In 

300 another moment the twang of the cord was heard, a white 

streak was seen glancing into the bushes, and the wounded 

buck plunged from the cover, to the very feet of his hidden 

enemy. Avoiding the horns of the infuriated animal, Uncas 

darted to his side, and passed his knife across the throat 

305 when, bounding to the edge of the river, it fell, dyeing the 

waters with its blood. 

" 'Twas done with Indian skill," said the scout, laughing 
inwardly, but with vast satisfaction; "and 'twas a pretty 
sight to behold! Though an arrow is a near shot, and needs 
310 a knife to finish the work." 

"Hugh!" ejaculated his companion, turning quickly, like 
a hound who scented game. 

"By the Lord, here is a drove of them!" exclaimed the 



The Last of the Mohicans 55 

scout, whose eyes began to glisten with the ardor of his 
usual occupation; "if they come within range of a bullet 3 le 
I will drop one, though the whole Six Nations should be 
lurking within sound! What do you hear, Chingachgook? 
for to my ears the woods are dumb." 

"There is but one deer, and he is dead," said the Indian, 
bending his body till his ear nearly touched the earth. 320 
"I hear the sounds of feet!" 

"Perhaps the wolves have driven the buck to shelter, and 
are following on his trail." 

"No. The horses of white men are coming ! " returned the 
other, raising himself with dignity, and resuming his seat 325 
on the log with his former composure. "Hawk-eye, they 
are your brothers; speak to them." 

"That will I, and in English that the king needn't be 
ashamed to answer," returned the hunter, speaking in the 
language of which he boasted; "but I see nothing, nor do 330 
I hear the sounds of man or beast; 'tis strange that an Indian 
should understand white sounds better than a man who, 
his very enemies will own, has no cross in his blood, although 
he may have lived with the red skins long enough to be 
suspected! Ha! there goes something like the cracking of a 335 
dry stick, too — now I hear the bushes move — yes, yes, there 
is a trampling that .1 mistook for the falls — and — but here 
they come themselves; God keep them from the Iroquois!" 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 
1794-1878 

William Cullen Bryant has been called "The American 
Wordsworth," because he was most profoundly influenced 
by the teachings of that great English poet in making 
nature the most prominent object of his reflective musings. 
He is undoubtedly America's greatest nature poet, just as 
Wordsworth is England's. He interpreted nature as he 
saw and knew it as a New England country boy; and while 
the application of his best poetry is universal, it was the 
American flowers, birds, and scenery that he painted, and 
the American point of view is everywhere evident. Bryant 
has also been called the first distinctively great American 
poet, the poet who first produced work recognized in 
England as in any way comparable to that of the nine- 
teenth-century English poets who were his contemporaries. 
The fact that the greatest of the English critics, Matthew 
Arnold, said that Bryant was facile princeps among American 
poets and expressed his approval of Hartley Coleridge's judg- 
ment that "To a Waterfowl" was the best short poem in the 
English language, is proof enough that Bryant was at that 
early time recognized as a poet along with Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, and Southey. We do not mean to say that 
Bryant is in any sense as great a poet as either of the first 
two of these, but he certainly ranks above the minor poets, 
where Southey must be classed. 

Bryant was born November 3, 1794, in Cummington, a 
town in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. 
His father. Dr. Peter Bryant, was a descendant of good 
Puritan stock from the days of the first settlement at 
Plymouth; and his mother, Sarah Snell, was likewise de- 
scended from a famous Puritan family, that of John and 
Priscilla Alden, whom Longfellow has immortalized in 
"The Courtship of Miles Standish." Dr. Bryant was a 
cultured man and an ardent Federalist, and he took pains 
to educate his children in both literary and political lines 
after his own ideals. William Cullen was a remarkably 
precocious child. It is authoritatively stated that he 

[56] 




From a pho'.ograph 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



William Cullen Bryant 57 

learned his alphabet .at sixteen months, wrote poetry at 
nine years, translated Latin verses at ten, composed political 
satires at thirteen, and wrote the first draft of "Thana- 
topsis," which has since been recognized as an American 
if not a world masterpiece, before he was seventeen. It 
must be remembered in contemplating this last marvelous 
performance, however, that " Thanatopsis " had frequent 
revisions before it reached its present final form, and that 
the finest portions of the poem were added when the poet had 
reached his twenty-seventh year. When he was five years 
old, Bryant was sent to live with his grandfather Snell in 
order that he might attend school. The poet himself tells 
us that he was "almost an infallible speller," and one of the 
fleetest runners in school. His precocity made it seem 
profitable to give him a college education, and so he was 
sent to his maternal uncle to begin the study of Latin, and 
then to the Reverend Moses Hallock's preparatory school at 
Plainfield to begin Greek. He soon mastered both these 
ancient languages. His conquest of the difficult Greek was 
wonderfully rapid, for he tells us that within two months 
from the time he began with the Greek alphabet he had 
read through the New Testament in the original and was 
almost as familiar with it as with the English translation. 
Usually such precocity indicates early maturity and rapid 
decline of powers, but when we remember that Bryant 
retained his powers through a long and active journalistic life, 
and at the age of eighty was still producing excellent poetry, 
we are all the more astounded at this recital of his early 
development. 

At sixteen Bryant entered Williams College and remained 
one year. He was disappointed in the advantages offered 
here, and with his father's consent, he decided to transfer to 
Yale College at New Haven, Connecticut, the next year. 
When the time came for him to leave for Yale, however, his 
father's straitened finances would not permit of further 
college trainmg, and Bryant reluctantly gave up his cherished 
ambition and turned to the study of law. He read law in 
two private offices, and was admitted to the bar in 18 15. 
For nine years he practiced his profession diligently but not 
enthusiastically, beginning at Plainfield where he had once 
attended school, but shortly afterwards removing to Great 
Barington, a more promising town near by. Here he met 
and married Miss Frances Fairchild, and she proved to be 



58 American Literary Readings 

what he called the good angel of his life. During this period 
he addressed several poems to her, but preserved only one 
of them in his printed volumes — "The Fairest of the Rural 
Maids," which Poe called "the truest poem written by 
Bryant." Other poems later in life touch upon his beauti- 
ful attachment for her, such as "The Life That Is," in 
which he celebrates her recovery from an illness, and 
"October, 1866," which mourns her death. 

It was in 1825 that Bryant finally gave up the practice of 
law, which had always been distasteful to him, and turned to 
journalism as a career. He was appointed to be editor of a 
monthly literary periodical called the New York Review. 
After a short and checkered career this journal was merged 
with others, and Bryant became assistant editor of the 
New York Evening Post. Within a short time the editor- 
in-chief died, and Bryant was promoted to this position. 
He made the Evening Post the best edited newspaper in 
New York, and he soon attained a controlling financial 
interest in this great daily, so that he was from this time 
on a comparatively wealthy man. In his youth, under the 
tuition, and inspiration of his father, who was a staunch 
Federalist, Bryant had written and published "The Em- 
bargo," a severe satire on the Democratic president, Thomas 
Jefferson. It seems like a stroke of the irony of fate that in 
later life he should become the chief editorial writer and 
owner of a great Democratic journal. In his new position 
he was an influential spokesman for high political and 
moral ideals, and be became quite distinguished, not as an 
orator, but as a maker of high-toned and finished addresses 
on many historic and literary occasions. He traveled 
much during his later years, making no fewer than seven 
visits abroad. He contributed travel letters to his paper 
during these trips, and afterwards collected the best of these 
in a volume called Letters of a Traveler. While he did not 
meet with the eclat that greeted some of our later literary 
men in their visits to Europe, he was everywhere recog- 
nized as a man of distinction, and he had the unfailing good 
taste not to parade his own social success nor to betray the 
hospitality of his entertainers by writing them up in his 
letters. 

Bryant's career as a real poet began in 18 17 with his 
father's presentation of " Thanatopsis " and "A Fragment" 
(later called "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood") to 



William Cullen Bryant 59 

the editors of the North American Review. The story of the 
amazement of these men at the character of the verse, no 
such poetry having hitherto been produced on this side of 
the Atlantic, has been frequently told. The genesis of 
"To a Waterfowl," written when he went to Plainfield to 
practice law in 18 18, is also well known. (Seethe introduc- 
tory notes to these poems in pp. 510-515.) Bryant never 
surpassed these early efforts, though some critics hold 
that he sustained the reputation made in his early years 
even when he became an octogenarian. In 182 1 he pub- 
lished his first thin volume of poems, and in 1832 a second 
and enlarged edition appeared, the most notable of the 
additional poems being "A Forest Hymn," "To the Fringed 
Gentian," "Song of Marion's Men," and "Death of the 
Flowers." The last named poem opens with the familiar 
lines, 

" The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere." 

and closes with a beautiful tribute to his beloved sister, who 
had died in the autumn. Other editions of the poems 
appeared from time to time, and by 1864 Bryant had 
garnered a considerable volume of poems, though he was not 
so prolific as most of our major poets. "The Prairies," 
a poem full of the breadth and sweep of our western plains; 
"The Battlefield," in which occiirs the most frequently 
quoted passage in all his poetry, 

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 
Th' eternal years of God are hers; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 
And dies among his worshipers." 

"Oh Mother of a Mighty Race," a patriotic tribute to 
America; "Robert of Lincoln," an onomatopoetic bird 
song entirely different in tone from anything else that 
Bryant wrote; "Sella" and "The Little People of the Snow," 
two longer fairy pieces; and "The Flood of Years," a 
reversion to the theme and manner of " Thanatopsis " when 
the poet was eighty-two, are perhaps the best of these later 
productions. 

As a relief from his grief over the death of his wife in 
1866, Bryant turned to the translation of the Iliad and 
the Odyssey. He had previously translated some portions 
of the fifth book of the Odyssey, but he now set seriously 



6o American Literary Readings 

about converting the whole of the two great Homeric epics 
into blank verse. This remarkable achievement, begun 
when he was seventy-two and completed when he was 
seventy-seven, may be placed with Longfellow's translation 
of Dante's Divina Commedia and Bayard Taylor's of 
Goethe's Faustus as one of the three greatest translations 
produced in America, works which rank high among the 
best of this kind in all English literature. 

Bryant died on June 12, 1878, from concussion of the brain 
due to a fall caused by a sunstroke suffered by him two weeks 
before his death while he was making an address at the 
unveiling of a statue to the Italian patriot Mazzini. During 
the last years of his life he was many times called the first 
citizen of the republic. His life was pure and noble, and he 
well deserved the encomiums that were spoken and written 
of him all over the country. He was undoubtedly a great 
and good man. Nature, whom he loved so well and inter- 
preted so beautifully, had made him one of her own noble- 
men. He was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, where he 
owned an estate and where his wife was buried twelve 
years before. 

It has been customary since Lowell's criticism (see "A 
Fable for Critics," p. 364) to speak of Bryant's coldness and 
lack of passion. It is undoubtedly true that there is a lack 
of enthusiastic passion or demonstrative sentiment in his 
poetry, but it would be more accurate to call his style 
restrained and classic than stiff and frigid. Bryant was a 
man of deep feeling, but he was naturally reserved in dis- 
position, and he controlled his feelings with that perfect 
poise, self-restraint, and repose which is characteristic of 
the classic poets at their best. He was a devoted son, 
husband, and father, a loyal friend, and a patriotic citizen. 
There is certainly a note of tender delicacy, genuine warmth, 
and deep spirituality in much of his poetry. Among some 
modern critics, too, there is a tendency to belittle Bryant's 
poetical genius because of the evident didacticism, the 
serious ethical purpose, and the melancholy note in much of 
his verse. It is very true that these elements exist iri his 
poetry, and perhaps to the modern artistic temperament 
there is a too patent moral and a too constantly somber or 
sober tone in his best poems. But this was the natural 
tendency of his genius ; and even if the range of his muse was 
not wide, he has certainly expressed himself well in his chosen 



William Cullen Bryant 6i 

domain. None of our poets has better expressed the funda- 
mental seriousness and the sober delight in noble ethical 
ideals of the Anglo-Saxon race, and we may safely predict 
that the best of Bryant's poetry, as represented in "Thana- 
topsis" and "To a Waterfowl," will be read long after 
much that is now held in high esteem by his detractors shall 
have passed into oblivion. 

(The standard life of Bryant is that by his son-in-law, Parke Godwin, 
in two volumes. Two more recent briefer studies are those by John 
Bigelow in the American Men of Letters Series and W. A. Bradley 
in the English Men of Letters Series.) 



THANATOPSIS 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; — 
Go forth, under the open sky, and list 
To Nature's teachings, while from all around — 
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air, — 
Comes a still voice — Yet a few days, and thee 
The all-beholding sun shall see no more 
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, 
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, 
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist 
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim 
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, 
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up 
Thine individual being, shalt thou go 
To mix for ever with the elements. 
To be a brother to the insensible rock 
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain 
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak 
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. 

[62] 



Thanatopsis 63 

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
With patriarchs of the infant world — with kings, 
The powerful of the earth — the wise, the good, 
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills 
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between; 
The venerable woods — rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, 
Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, 
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven. 
Are shining on the sad abodes of death. 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the wings 
Of morning, traverse B area's desert sands, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound. 
Save his own dashings — yet — the dead are there: 
And millions in those solitudes, since first i 

The flight of years began, have laid them down 
In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe < 

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come « 

And make their bed with thee. As the long train 



64 American Literary Readings 

Of ages glide away, the sons of men, 

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes 

In the full strength of years, matron and maid. 

And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man, — • 

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side. 

By those, who in their turn shall follow them. 

^ So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 

i To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night. 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 

) Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 



TO A WATERFOWL 

Whither, midst falling dew. 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day. 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly limned upon the crimson sky. 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean side ? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, — 



The Death of the Flowers 65 

The desert and illimitable air, — 
Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land. 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest. 
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 



THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS 

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, 
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and 

sere. 
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie 

dead; 
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. 
The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the 5 

jay, 
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy 

day. 



66 American Literary Readings 

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately 

sprang and stood 
In brighter light, and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood? 
Alas! they all are in their graves, the gentle race of flowers 
10 Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. 
The rain is falling where they lie, but the cold November rain 
Calls not from out the gloomy earth the lovely ones again. 

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, 
And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow 
15 But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood. 
And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty 

stood, 
Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the 

plague on men. 
And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, 

glade, and glen. 

And now, when comes the calm mild day, as still such days 

will come, 
20 To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; 
When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the 

trees are still. 
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill. 
The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late 

he bore. 
And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no 

more. 

25 And then I think of one who in her youthful beauty died. 
The fair meek blossom that grew up and faded by my side. 
In the cold moist earth we laid her, when the forests cast the 

leaf, 
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief: 
Yet not unmeet it was that one, like that young friend of 
ours, 
30 So gentle and so beautiful, should perish with the flowers. 



Robert of Lincoln 67 

ROBERT OF LINCOLN 

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 
Near to the nest of his little dame, 
Over the mountain-side or mead, 

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name : 
Bob-o'-Hnk, bob-o'-Uhk, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Snug and safe is that nest of ours, 
Hidden among the summer flowers. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed, 

Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; 
White are his shoulders and white his crest, 
Hear him call in his merry note : 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Look, what a nice new coat is mine, 
Sure there was never a bird so fine. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife. 

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings. 
Passing at home a patient life. 

Broods in the grass while her husband sings: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-Hnk, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear 
Thieves and robbers while I am here. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Modest and shy as a nun is she; 

One weak chirp is her only note. 
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he. 

Pouring boasts from his little throat : 



68 American Literary Readings 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 

Spink, spank, spink; 
Never was I afraid of man; 
Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can! 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Six white eggs on a bed of hay, 

Flecked with purple, a pretty sight ! 
There as the mother sits all day, 
Robert is singing with all his might : 
Bob-o'-Unk, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Nice good wife, that never goes out, 
Keeping house while I frolic about. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Soon as the little ones chip the shell. 
Six wide mouths are open for food; 
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, 
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
This new life is likely to be 
Hard for a gay young fellow like me. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln at length is made 

Sober with work, and silent with care; 
Off is his holiday garment laid. 
Half forgotten that merry air: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Nobody knows but my mate and I 
Where our nest and our nestlings lie. 
Chee, chee, chee. 



Robert of Lincoln 69 

Summer wanes ; the children are grown': 

Fun and froHc no more he knows; 
Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; 
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
When you can pipe that merry old strain, 
Robert of Lincoln, come back again. 
Chee, chee, chee. 



WALT WHITMAN 
1819-1892 

Walt Whitman, "The Good Gray Poet," was during his 
Hfetime a literary storm center, and even yet his name 
cannot be mentioned in any circle of readers without bring- 
ing forth both a paean of praise and a chorus of condemna- 
tion. Some one has called him the best loved and the best 
hated of all our writers. He had a desperately hard struggle 
to gain a hearing, but he persisted with a supreme and 
undisturbed patience and self-confidence, and triumphed in 
the end. As time goes on, his figure looms larger and 
larger on the literary horizon, so that there are many who 
now recognize in this so-called sensual, self- vaunting, un- 
lettered hoodlum of Manhattan, the one universally great 
literary genius produced by American democracy. 

Whitman was born May 31, 1819, at the old family home- 
stead, West Hills, near Huntington, Long Island. His 
father came from a line of English yeomen who had long 
been established in America, and his mother was descended 
from the Holland-Dutch family of Van Velsor, which had 
a similarly long residence in this country. They were of the 
simple, unlettered farming and seafaring classes, and made 
little pretension to material prosperity or social standing. 
Whitman was always unfeignedly proud of his humble origin, 
for he knew that he came from a plain, strong, virile, healthy, 
American stock, and thus as a true son of the soil he might 
claim to be the appointed poet of democracy. 

"Starting from fish-shape Paumanok where I was born. 
Well-begotten, and raised by a perfect mother," 

he says; and again, 

"My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, 
Born here of parents born here, from parents 
the same, and their parents the same." 

In this old home on Long Island, or Paumanok, as he loved 
to call it, the child lived until he was four years old, absorbing 
even at this age the rural sights and sounds, the vigor and 
freshness of the salt sea air, and the power and constancy 

[70] 




WALT WHITMAN 



Walt Whitman 71 

of the ocean. Truly the sea was "the cradle endlessly 
rocking" for this child of Nature. During the child's fifth 
year, his father removed to Brooklyn to engage in the 
builder's trade, but the boy still had free access to the 
ancestral home and to the wild and unfrequented parts of 
the island. There are hundreds of allusions that prove 
Walt was a great deal more of a country-bred than a city- 
bred boy. 

His education in the public schools of Brooklyn closed 
when he was thirteen. He began now to help earn his own 
bread by working in a lawyer's office as an errand boy. He 
soon entered upon an apprenticeship to the printer's trade, 
however, and until his seventeenth year found employ- 
ment in various capacities in printing establishments. 
Then for two or three years he taught country schools on 
Long Island, boarding around, as was the custom, and 
familiarizing himself with the life of the common people. 
He was a prime favorite with old and young, playing ball 
with the boys and engaging in his favorite sport of fishing 
as opportunity afforded. It is said that he succeeded admir- 
ably as a teacher, using a sort of oral method of his own 
invention, and commanding always the respect and affection 
of his pupils and patrons. Then he opened a printing office 
at Huntington and founded a weekly paper. The Long 
Islander. His success in this venture was not pronounced, 
and the paper soon changed hands, but this was the begin- 
ning of his career as a journalist. He now contributed 
sentimental sketches and stories to some of the New York 
papers, and worked in a desultory sort of way at his trade 
of printing. This was his fallow or loafing period, as he 
called it. He was studying men and women in real life with 
all the intensity and constancy of application that many 
another youth puts on his college course. The city streets 
and the country lanes, filled with all sorts and conditions 
of life, were Walt Whitman's university. He was exceed- 
ingly fond of the theater and opera, too, and he managed 
to see and hear a great many of the foremost actors and 
singers of his time. 

Whitman was progressing slowly in his chosen field of 
journalism, and in 1848 he became editor of the Brooklyn 
Eagle, a daily paper of some importance. He had been com- 
posing a great deal of conventional prose and verse, among 
other things many tales after the manner of Hawthorne 



72 American Literary Readings 

and one novel — all of little worth. He expressed the wish 
later in life that these early productions might be allowed 
to remain in their deserved oblivion. About this time a 
gentleman from the South offered him an editorial position 
on a newly founded daily, The Crescent, in New Orleans, 
and Whitman accepted the position because it would 
give him an opportunity to see something of America. 
With his younger brother Jeff he made a leisurely trip 
down the Mississippi, learning much from these new sights 
and experiences. He did not remain long in the South, and 
we find him again making a leisurely working tour back to 
New York and Brooklyn by way of St. Louis, Chicago, 
Niagara, and Albany. On this journey of eight thousand 
miles he was formulating some conception of the sweep 
and grandeur of the land he loved and was to sing so well. 
He was still taking life easy, still in his fallow period. "I 
loaf and invite my soul," he wrote later in the "Song of 
Myself." He worked but little at his regular business, but 
spent many hours in loitering around the streets, riding 
on the tops of cabs, talking and consorting with all sorts 
and types of people, taking long solitary walks in the woods 
and swims in the Sound, and letting his imagination brood 
over all. He often carried some old book with him to 
browse in or to digest at leisure. He enumerates among 
these the New and Old Testaments, Aeschylus, Sophocles, 
Homer, Dante, Ossian, Scott, Shakespeare. It was a 
wonderful experience to read these old masterpieces in the 
woods or by the sea, and their influence on the development 
of his own individual genius was undoubtedly profound. 
Shakespeare and Homer he especially admired, often 
reciting long passages from them as he raced, naked from one 
of his swims, up and down the hard sandy beach of the then 
secluded Coney Island region. Emerson and Carlyle were 
also powerful stimulants absorbed by Whitman at this time. 
Whitman now associated himself with his father as a 
builder and trader of houses. His work prospered, and 
there was a fair prospect that he might become comfortably 
well off ; but according to his own statement and the universal 
evidence of others, the making or possession of money had 
no fascination for him. He suddenly gave up his new busi- 
ness to devote himself to the strange and hard career which 
he felt irresistibly called to. Though he had had an affair 
of the heart and knew the joys and the tragedy of illicit 



Walt Whitman 73 

love, he had never been legally married and so had none 
of the responsibilities of a family resting upon him. His 
own wants were few and easily supplied. His real ambition 
to become a poet, ever before him and never once despaired 
of, was slowly ripening, and with a kind of solitary persist- 
ence he kept brooding over his mission, and working surely, 
steadily, unobtrusively into that style which he afterwards 
flashed upon the world as a new and original type of poetry. 

In 1855, set up and printed largely by himself in the office 
of some friends, appeared the first edition of Leaves of Grass, 
the strangest, most misunderstood, most maligned book 
that ever came from the American press. It was like 
Carlyle's Sartor Rcsartus in England, a work of genius, but 
hooted and hissed and misinterpreted until some knowing 
ones expounded the riddle. Leaves of Grass was written 
in a kind of unrimed free verse, with lines of from four or 
five to sixty-five or seventy syllables arranged in a sort of 
phrasal rhythm to suit the ear or the caprice of the author. 
Whether it is verse or rhythmical prose is still a debated 
point. It is certain that there is no other verse like it, 
and it is also certain that the long prose preface is almost 
as rhythmical as any other part of the book. Whitman him- 
self said much later, when some of the earlier excrescences 
had been removed, that he consciously threw out all the con- 
ventional machinery of verse, "the entire stock in trade of 
rhyme-talking heroes and heroines and all the love-sick plots 
of customary poetry, ,and constructs his verse in a loose and 
free metre of his own, of an irregular length of lines, appar- 
ently lawless at first perusal, although on a closer examina- 
tion a certain regularity appears, like the recurrence of lesser 
and larger waves on the sea-shore, rolling in without inter- 
mission, and fitfully rising and falling." Readers have 
almost universally testified that Whitman's verse seems 
most like real poetry when read aloud out-of-doors, and 
particularly under the waving trees or by the throbbing sea, 
with the drift of clouds and the swoop of sea-birds over- 
head. His whole aim was to be himself and no other, to be 
original and no imitator, to be the spokesman of his own soul 
and of democratic America, and not an echo of the dead 
muses of other times and other nations. 

Whitman succeeded in his aim — succeeded so well in 
writing an entirely new book that when it appeared it 
was called "the work of some escaped lunatic," and the 



74 American Literary Readings 

author was belabored as one whose soul was the reincarna- 
tion of "a donkey who died of disappointed love." Lowell 
could never overcome his disgust for the author of Leaves 
of Grass, Whittier threw the book in the fire when he read 
it, and many critics accepted literally what Whitman said 
about his barbaric yawp, his grossness and sensuality, and 
even animality, and his identification of himself with uni- 
versal matters of sex and the whole physical and psychical 
life of man. Emerson, however, saw in this book, as he 
had seen in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, distinct evidences of 
genius. He wrote the author a letter which has been fre- 
quently reprinted but which loses nothing by repetition, 
for it was the first note of authoritative recognition which 
Whitman received and the impetus from which his fame has 
grown. Emerson said in part: "I find it {Leaves of Grass] 
the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America 
has yet contributed. ... I give you joy of your free 
and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incom- 
parable things said incomparably well, as they must be. 
I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and 
which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at 
the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had 
a long foreground somewhere for such a start .... It has 
the best merits, namely of fortifying and encouraging." 

The next year the second and greatly enlarged edition 
of Leaves of Grass appeared with appended additional 
matter containing Emerson's letter and Whitman's long 
reply in which he constantly addressed Emerson as master. 
Emerson's name under the sentence "I greet you at the 
beginning of a great career" was actually printed on the 
back of the book, an act of bad taste which only a sublimely 
egotistical or an uncultured man could have been guilty of. 
In spite of Emerson's generous recognition of a new light, 
the book did not sell. In England the recognition was 
more spontaneous, though not enough interest was mani- 
fested greatly to encourage the new poet. But Whitman 
needed no encouragement — at least he was not to be daunted 
by discouragement. He had determined to have his own 
way, and neither praise nor blame, encouragement nor dis- 
couragement seemed to deflect him in the least from his 
purpose. Years later he wrote, "The best comfort of the 
whole business ... is that unstopp'd and unwarp'd by 
any influence outside the soul within me, I have had my say 



Walt Whitman 75 

entirely in my own way and put it unerringly on record — 
the value thereof to be decided by time." He did not bid 
for "soft eulogies, big money returns, nor the approbation 
of existing schools and conventions"; and so he moved 
on his way unruffled and undisturbed. The third edition 
of his book appeared in i860 with many changes and addi- 
tions, as was his custom. 

The Civil War was the culminating experience in Walt 
Whitman's education as the poet of democracy. He did not 
volunteer for active service, but his brother George did, and 
when Walt heard that George was wounded and in a hospital 
in Virginia he went to the front. Finding his brother already 
recovered, but thousands of others in the hospitals needing 
comfort and aid, he became a volunteer nurse in and around 
Washington. It is said that he literally came into touch 
with thousands of soldiers while on his rounds, and served 
them all alike, whether northern or southern, high or low, 
deserving or undeserving, with an unswerving and all- 
encompassing devotion. He was a strong, clean, healthy, 
magnetic specimen of manhood; his very presence seemed 
a benediction and a curative power to the sick and wounded 
soldiers. He carried in his haversack all sorts of articles 
that would meet the needs of the patients or cheer them in 
their confinement. For one he would write a letter, from 
another take a dying message for loved ones, to another give 
a comrade's manly farewell kiss. He said in one of his 
letters of this period that no greater love ever existed than 
that between him and these poor sick, dying soldier boys. 
No more inspiring story of the war has come down to us than 
this of the unselfish and large charity of Walt Whitman in 
the hospitals. He literally gave himself for others, for his 
health broke down under the strain, his system becoming 
inoculated with malaria and his body infected with blood 
poison from dressing a wound. 

After the war, when he had recovered from his illness, he 
was given a clerkship in the Department of the Interior; 
but when Secretary Harlan discovered that Whitman was 
the author of what he called an indecent and immoral book, 
he peremptorily dismissed him from the service. Some of 
Whitman's friends interceded but could not move the 
secretary from his decision. Then another position of equal 
pay was found for Whitman in the Attorney-General's 
department, the offending poet was quietly transferred, and 



76 American Literary Readings 

the incident was thought to be closed. It was closed so far 
as any further official action was concerned, but William D. 
O'Connor, a passionate journalist of Irish extraction, pub- 
lished "The Good Gray Poet," a pamphlet containing a 
gallant but injudicious defense of Whitman and a terrific 
arraignment of Secretary Harlan. This opened up the old 
discussion of Whitman's frankness and so-called indecency 
in treating matters of sex, and probably did more harm 
than good so far as the poet's reputation was concerned. 
But the title, "The Good Gray Poet," and the description 
fixed the name and appearance of the prematurely gray- 
haired hero forever in the public mind, and from this time 
onward Whitman had defenders and detractors enough. 
He had now surely arrived, as he had perhaps prematurely 
announced in the first edition of Leaves of Grass. 

Whitman's appearance at this time (1865) should be 
described, and no one has more fully or enthusiastically 
sketched him than his champion, William O'Connor. "For 
years past, thousands of people in New York, in Brooklyn, 
in Boston, in New Orleans, and latterly in Washington, 
have seen, even as I saw two hours ago, tallying, one might 
say, the streets of our American cities, and fit to have for 
his background and accessories their streaming populations 
and ample and rich fagades, a man of striking masculine 
beauty — a poet — powerful and venerable in appearance; 
large, calm, superbly formed; oftenest clad in the careless, 
rough, and always picturesque costume of the common 
people; resembling, and generally taken by strangers for, 
some great mechanic or stevedore, or seaman, or grand 
laborer of one kind or another; and passing slowly in this 
guise, with nonchalant and haughty step along the pave- 
ment, with the sunlight and shadows falling aroimd him. 
The dark sombrero he usually wears was, when I saw him 
just now, the day being warm, held for the moment in his 
hand; rich light an artist would have chosen lay upon his 
uncovered head, majestic, large, Homeric, and set upon his 
strong shoulders with the grandeur of ancient sculpture. I 
marked the countenance, serene, proud, cheerful, florid, 
grave; the brow seamed with noble wrinkles; the features 
massive and handsome, with firm blue eyes; the eyebrows 
and eyelids especially showing that fullness of arch seldom 
seen save in the antique busts; the flowing hair and fleecy 
beard, both very gray, and tempering with a look of age 



Walt Whitman 77 

the youthful aspect of one who is but forty-five; the sim- 
pHcity and purity of his dress, cheap and plain, but spotless, 
from snowy falling collar to burnished boot, exhaling faint 
fragrance ; the whole form surrounded with manliness as with 
a nimbus, and breathing, in its perfect health and vigor, the 
august charm of the strong." 

Just after the close of the Civil War, Whitman published 
a new volume of poems called Drum-Taps, and when the 
volume was going through the press he composed four poems 
which he called "Memorials for President Lincoln," and 
added them as a supplement. This volume contains some 
of Whitman's very finest work, notably the threnody 
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and the 
lyric lament "O Captain! My Captain!" From time to 
time other poems and prose pieces came out, and new and 
enlarged editions of Leaves of Grass appeared up until 1891, 
when the tenth and final form of this remarkable poetic 
evolution was prepared by the poet, some of it passing 
through his hands even after he had taken to his bed for the 
last time. It was in 1873 that he suffered a paralytic stroke 
and had to give up his position in Washington. He went 
to Camden, New Jersey, and lived with his brother for a few 
years until he partially recovered his health. During the 
remainder of his life he lectured occasionally on Lincoln, 
made journeys to the Far West and to Canada, and was 
the recipient of many visits from friends and admirers. His 
books were now more remunerative, and he was enabled to 
buy a modest little home at Camden. Here, even though 
broken in health, he enjoyed life up to the last. He had 
what he most craved, the comradeship and good-fellowship 
of those who understood and loved him. In 1888 he suffered 
the second stroke of paralysis, and from this time until his 
death, March 26, 1892, he was practically a helpless invalid. 
But up to the very last he retained his buoyancy of spirit 
and alertness of mind. 

In 1882 Whitman published a delightful prose volume, 
being notes taken from his own commonplace books, observa- 
tions and comments on nature, men, and events, and called 
it Specimen Days. This and Democratic Vistas, Memoranda 
of the War, and his letters and prefaces, make up the bulk 
of his prose remains. There are some excellent things 
excellently said, but the interest in Whitman's prose is due 
more perhaps to the veneration of his own personality and 



78 American Literary Readings 

the revelation of this personality in these works than to 
any absolute artistic value which may attach to the volumes 
themselves. 

As to Whitman's message in his poetry, his great themes 
were selfhood, comradeship, love, joy, nature, God, immor- 
tality, death, and above all democracy as exemplified in the 
American states. Edward Holmes analyzes Whitman as 
being intensely emotional, intensely self-conscious, intensely 
optimistic, and intensely American. We might add to this 
the one all-inclusive characteristic, and say he was intensely 
human. No one ever lived who was more normally and 
unmistakably a man. Lincoln's estimate squares true with 
every atom of his being, "Well, he looks like a man!'' 
The only serious weakness to be observed in his poetical 
output is that it is not always inspired. Wordsworth 
defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful 
emotion recollected in tranquillity." Whitman's poetry 
seems spontaneous enough, but it does not always express 
powerful emotion. Like Wordsworth, he was rather self- 
conscious and imagined that everything he felt and saw and 
thought or dreamed was worthy of preservation. And so, 
like Wordsworth again, he sometimes reaches banality in- 
stead of inspiration. The logical evolution of some of his 
poems is very vague or even totally indistinguishable. He 
injects topics that seem utterly foreign to his purpose, and 
he gives long catalogues of names and facts that can be 
logically designated^ only by the term "balderdash." 

And yet when we look back on Whitman now that a 
quarter of a century has passed since his death, we can 
begin to place him in his true historic perspective. There 
is no doubt but that he was one of the largest-brained, 
biggest-hearted men of his century. He had little or no 
formal education; and yet, without model or foreign influ- 
ence, when he felt the stirrings of genius within him he made 
his own instrument of expression merely by the rule of 
doing it. He said himself finally that he considered Leaves 
of Grass experimental as a literary form, just as he con- 
sidered the American government itself an experiment in 
democracy. The gradual revisions of the Leaves practically 
always tend toward a more restrained and artistic form of 
expression, and some of the later poetical works are almost 
above reproach in their artistic design, unity, and totality 
of effect, and poetic evolution. We may say that Walt 



Walt Whitman 79 

Whitman was a born poetical genius who found his own 
formless vehicle of expression at thirty-five, and tried to 
perfect himself in it by inflicting it on an unprepared public 
for the next thirty-five years. Whitman is not a broadly 
popular poet and perhaps never will be, for his work as a 
whole offers too strong a meat and is too elemental and cos- 
mic for the general public. But there is no longer any 
question as to his genius or as to the fundamental purity and 
goodness of his nature. His readers are steadily increasing 
as the world comes more and more to understand the man 
and his message, and it does not seem too rash now to 
predict that within the present century his name will be 
placed at the top in the list of the creative poets of America. 

(Among the many lives of Whitman, perhaps the best for general 
use are those by Bliss Perry in the American Men of Letters Series 
and by George R. Carpenter in the English Men of Letters Series. 
Two other sympathetic books should be consulted, the studies by 
John Addington Symons [English] and John Burroughs [American].) 



OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING 

Out of the cradle endlessly^ rocking, 

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, 

Out of the Ninth-month midnight. 

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child 

leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot, 
5 Down from the shower'd halo. 
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as 

if they were alive. 
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries. 
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me. 
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and 

fallings I heard, 
10 From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as 

if with tears. 
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the 

mist, 
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease. 
From the myriad thence-arous'd words. 
From the word stronger and more delicious than any, 
15 From such as now they start the scene revisiting, 
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing, 
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, 
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again. 
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves, 
20 1, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter. 
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them, 
A reminiscence sing. 

Once Paumanok, 

When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass 
was growing, 

[8o] 



Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 8i 

Up this seashore in some briers, 25 

Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two together. 

And their nest, and four Hght-green eggs spotted with brown, 

And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, 

And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her nest, silent, with 

bright eyes, 
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never dis- 30 

turbing them. 
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. 

Shine! shine! shine! 

Pour down your warmth, great sun! 

While we bask, we two together. 

Two together! _ 35 

Winds blow south or winds blow north, 

Day come white, or night come black, 

Home, or rivers and mountains from home. 

Singing all time, minding no time, 

While we two keep together. 40 

Till of a sudden. 

May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, 

One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on the nest. 

Nor retum'd that afternoon, nor the next, 

Nor ever appear'd again. 45 

And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea. 

And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather, 

Over the hoarse surging of the sea. 

Or flitting from brier to brier by day, 

I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird, 50 

The solitary guest from Alabama. 

Blow! blow! blow! 

Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok's shore; 

I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me. 



82 American Literary Readings 

ss Yes, when the stars glisten'd, 
All night long on the prong of a moss-scallop 'd stake, 
Down almost amid the slapping waves, 
Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears. 

He call'd on his mate, 
60 He pour'd forth the meanings which I of all men know. 

Yes, my brother I know, 

The rest might not, but I have treasur'd every note, 
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding. 
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the 

shadows, 
65 Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and 

sights after their sorts, 
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing, 
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair, 
Listen'd long and long; 

Listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating the notes, 
70 Following you my brother. 

Soothe! soothe! soothe! 

Close on its wave soothes the wave behind, 

And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one 

close, 
But my love soothes not me, not me. 

75 Low hangs the moon, it rose late. 
It is lagging — I think it is heavy with love, with love. 

madly the sea pushes upon the land. 
With love, with love. 

night! do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers f 
80 What is that little black thing I see there m the white f 



Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 83 

Loud! loud! loud! 

Loud I call to you, my love! 

High and clear I shoot my voice over the waves. 

Surely you must know who is here, is here. 

You must know who I am, my love, • ss 

Low-hanging moon! 

What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow f 

it is the shape, the shape of my mate! 

O moon do not keep her from me any longer. 

Land! land! land! 90 

Whichever way I turn, I think you could give me my mate 

hack again if you only would. 
For I am almost sure I see her dimly whichever way I look. 

rising stars! 

Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, will rise with some 
of you. 

throat! trembling throat! ' gs 

Sound clearer through the atmosphere! 

Pierce the woods, the earth, 

Somewhere listening to catch you must he the one I want. 

Shake out carols! 

Solitary here, the nighfs carols! 100 

Carols of lonesome love! death's carols! 

Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning moon! 

under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea! 

reckless despairing carols. 

But soft! sink low! 105 

Soft! let me just murmur, 

And do you wait a moment you husky-nois'd sea, 

Fc^ somewhere I believe I heard my mate responding to me, 



84 American Literary Readings 

So faint, I must be still, be still to listen, 
no But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately 
to me. 

Hither my love! 

Here I am! here! 

With this just-sustain' d note I announce myself to you, 

This gentle call is for you my love, for you. 

us Do not be decoy' d elsewhere. 

That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice, 
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray, 
Those are the shadows of leaves. 

darkness! in vain! 
120 I am very sick and sorrowful. 

brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea! 

troubled reflection in the sea! 

throat! throbbing heart! 

And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the night. 

125 past! happy life! songs of joy! 
In the air, in the woods, over fields, 
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! 
But my mate no m^re, no more with me! 
We two together no more. 

130 The aria sinking, 

All else continuing, the stars shining. 

The winds blowing, the notes of the bird continuous echoing, 
With angry moans the fierce old mother incessantly moaning. 
On the sands of Paimianok's shore gray and rustling, 
135 The yellow half -moon enlarged, sagging down, drooping, the 
face of the sea almost touching, 
The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the waves, with his hair 
the atmosphere dallying. 



Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking 85 

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, now at last tumul- 

tuously bursting, 
The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, swiftly depositing. 
The strange tears down the cheeks coursing. 
The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, ho 

The undertone, the savage old mother incessantly crying, 
To the boy's soul's questions sullenly timing, some drown'd 

secret hissing. 
To the outsetting bard. 

Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,) 

Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me? hs 

For I, that was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I have 

heard you, 
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake. 
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, 

louder, and more sorrowful than yours, 
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, 

never to die. 

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me, i5u 
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating 

you, 
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations, 
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me, 
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before 

what there in the night, 
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, 155 

The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, 
The unknown want, the destiny of me. 

O give me the clew! (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) 
O if I am to have so much, let me have more! 

A word then, (for I will conquer it,) leo 

The word final, superior to all, 



86 American Literary Readings 

Subtle, sent up — what is it? — ^I listen; 
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea- 
waves? 
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet sands? 

165 Whereto answering, the sea, 
Delaying not, hurrying not. 
Whisper' d me through the night, and very plainly before 

daybreak, 
• Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death 
And again death, death, death, death, 
170 Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd 
child's heart. 
But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, 
Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly 

all over, 
Death, death, death, death, death. 

Which I do not forget, 
175 But fuse the song of my dusky demon and brother, 

That he sang to me in the moonlight on Paimianok's gray 
beach, 

With the thousand responsive songs at random. 

My own songs awaked from that hour. 

And with them the key, the word up from the waves, 
180 The word of the sweetest song and all songs. 

That strong and delicious word which, creeping to my feet, 

(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, swathed in 
sweet garments, bending aside,) 

The sea whisper'd me. 



When Lilacs Last in the Door yard Bloom' d 87 

WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOM 'D 

I 
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, 
And the great star early droop 'd in the western sky in the 

night, 
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 5 

And thought of him I love. 

2 
O powerful western fallen star! 
O shades of night — O moody, tearful night! 
O great star disappear'd — O the black murk that hides the 

star! 
O cruel hands that hold me powerless — O helpless soul of me ! 10 
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. 

3 
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white- 

wash'd palings. 
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves 

of rich green, 
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the 

perfume strong I love. 
With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the door- 15 

yard. 
With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of 

rich green, 
A sprig with its flower I break. 

4 
In the swamp in secluded recesses, 
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. 

Solitary the thrush, 20 

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, 
Sings by himself a song. 



88 American Literary Readings 

Song of the bleeding throat, 

Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, 
25 If thou wast not granted to sing thou would'st surely die.) 

5 
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, 
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets 

peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris. 
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing 

the endless grass, 
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud 

in the dark-brown fields uprisen, 
30 Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the 

orchards. 
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, 
Night and day journeys a coffin. 

6 

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets. 

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the 

land, 
35 With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in 

black. 
With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil'd 

women standing. 
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of th 

night. 
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and 

the unbared heads. 
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre 

faces, 
40 With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices 

rising strong and solemn. 
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around 

the coffin. 
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — where 

amid these you journey. 



When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 89 

With the tolHng tolHng bells' perpetual clang, 

Here, coffin that slowly passes, 

I give you my sprig of lilac. 45 

7 
(Nor for you, for one alone. 

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring. 
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you 
O sane and sacred death. 

All over bouquets of roses, 

O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, so 

But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, 

Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes. 

With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, 

For you and the coffins all of you O death.) 

8 
O western orb sailing the heaven, ss 

Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I 

walk'd, 
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night. 
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night 

after night. 
As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, 

(while the other stars all look'd on,) 
As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something I eo 

know not what kept me from sleep,) 
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how 

full you were of woe. 
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool 

transparent night. 
As I watch 'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward 

black of the night. 
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad 

orb, 
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. es 



go American Literary Readings 

9 

Sing on there in the swamp, 

singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your 

call, 

1 hear, I come presently, I understand you, 

But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me, 
70 The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 

ID 

how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? 
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that 

has gone? 
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? 

Sea-winds blown from east and west, 
75 Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western 
sea, till there on the prairies meeting. 
These and with these and the breath of my chant, 
I'll perfume the grave of him I love. 

II 
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? 
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, 
80 To adorn the burial-house of him I love? 

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, 

With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke 

lucid and bright, 
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, 

sinking sun, burning, expanding the air. 
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green 

leaves of the trees prolific, 
85 In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, 

with a wind-dapple here and there. 
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the 

sky, and shadows. 



When Lilacs Last in the Door yard Bloom' d 91 

And the city at hand with dwelHngs so dense, and stacks of 

chimneys, 
And all the scenes of life and the workshops and the 

workmen homeward returning. 
12 
Lo, body and soul — this land, 
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and 90 

hurrying tides, and the ships. 
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the 

light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri, 
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and 

corn. 

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty. 

The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, 

The gentle soft-born measureless light, 95 

The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill' d noon. 

The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, 

Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 

13 
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird. 
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the 100 

bushes. 
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. 

Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song, 
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. 

O liquid and free and tender ! 

wild and loose to my soul — wondrous singer! 10.5 

You only I hear — yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) 
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. 

14 
Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth. 
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, 
and the farmers preparing their crops, 



92 American Literary Readings 

no In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes 

and forests, 
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds and 

the storms,) 
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, 

and the voices of children and women. 
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they 

sail'd. 
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields 

all busy with labor, 
115 And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each 

with its meals and minutia of daily usages, 
And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the 

cities pent — lo, then and there. 
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me 

with the rest, 
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail, 
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge 

of death. 

120 Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, 
And the thought of death close- walking the other side of me. 
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the 

hands of companions, 
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, 
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in 
the dimness, 
125 To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. 

And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me. 

The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us comrades three. 

And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. 

From deep secluded recesses, 
130 From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still. 
Came the carol of the bird. 



When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd 93 

And the charm of the carol rapt me, 

As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, 

And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. 

Come lovely and soothing death, 135 

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving. 
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
Sooner or later delicate death. 

Prais'd be the fathomless universe 

For life and joy, and for objects attd knovuledge curious, uo 

And for love, sweet love — but praise! praise! praise! 

For the sure-envuinding arms of cool-enfolding death. 

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, 
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome f 
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 144 

/ bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come 
unfalteringly. 

Approach strong deliver ess. 

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the 

dead, 
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, 
Laved in the flood of thy bliss death. iso 

From me to thee glad serenades. 

Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and f east- 
ings for thee. 

And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are 
fitting. 

And life and the fields, and the huge and thorightful night. 

The night in silence under many a star, 155 

The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I 

know. 
And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiVd death. 
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 



94 . American Literary Readings 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 
160 Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the 
prairies wide, 
Over the dense-pack' d cities all and the teeming wharves and 

ways, 
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee death. 

15 
To the tally of my soul, 

Loud and strong kept up the gray -brown bird, 
165 With pure deliberate notes spreading, filling the night. 

Loud in the pines and cedars dim. 

Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume. 

And I with my comrades there in the night; 

While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, 
170 As to long panoramas of visions. 

And I saw askant the armies, 

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags. 

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc'd with 

missiles I saw them. 
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and 

bloody, 
175 And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs (and all in 

silence,) 
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken. 

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, 
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, 
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, 
180 But I saw they were not as was thought. 

They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer 'd not. 
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd. 
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd, 
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd. 



When Lilacs Last in the Door yard Bloom' d 95 

16 

Passing the visions, passing the night, iss 

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, 
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of 

my soul. 
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever- 
altering song, 
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, 

flooding the night, 
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet 190 

again bursting with joy. 
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, 
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, 
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, 
I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning with 
spring. 

I cease from my song for thee, 19s 

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, com- 
muning with thee, 
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night. 

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, 
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird. 
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul, 200 

With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance 

full of woe. 
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the 

bird. 
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to 

keep, for the dead I loved so well. 
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands — and 

this for his dear sake, 
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, 205 
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim. 



96 American Literary Readings 

CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is 

won. 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting. 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
5 But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 

the bleeding drops of red. 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
10 Rise up — for you the flag is flung ^ for you the bugle trills. 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores 

a-crowding. 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 
turning ; 

Here Captain ! dear father ! 
This arm beneath your head ! 
15 It is some dream that on the deck, 

You 've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will. 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and 
done, 
20 From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won ; 
Exult shores, and ring bells! 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

1865 



The Mystic Trumpeter 97 

THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER 

I 
Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musician, 
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night. 

I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I catch thy notes. 

Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me. 

Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost. 5 

2 

Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee resounds 

Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life 

Was fill'd with aspirations high, unform'd ideals, 

Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging, 

That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet 10 

echoing, pealing. 

Gives out to no one's ears but mine, but freely gives to mine, 

That I may thee translate. 

» 

3 

Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow thee, 

While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene. 

The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day 15 

withdraw, 
A holy calm descends like dew upon me, 
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of paradise, 
I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses; 
Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, 

launchest me, 
Floating and basking upon heaven's lake. 20 

4 
Blow again trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes, 
Bring the old pageants, show the feudal world. 

What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me. 
Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are in their castle 
halls, the troubadours are singing, 



98 American Literary Readings 

25 Arm'd knights go forth to redress wrongs, some in quest of 

the holy Graal; 
I see the tournament, I see the contestants incased in heavy 

armor seated on stately champing horses, 
I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and smiting steel; 
I see the Crusaders' tumultuous armies — hark, how the 

cymbals clang, 
Lo, where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on 

high. 

5 
30 Blow again trumpeter ! and for thy theme. 
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the 

setting. 
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang. 
The heart of man and woman all for love ; 
No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing 

love. 

35 O how the immortal phantoms crowd around me! 
I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and know the 

flames that heat the world. 
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers. 
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark, and nigh 

to death ; 
Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, that mocks time 

and space, 
40 Love, that is day and night — love, that is sun and moon and 

stars. 
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfimie. 
No other words but words of love, no other thought but love. 

6 

Blow again trumpeter — conjure war's alarums. 

Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls, 
45 Lo, where the arm'd men hasten — lo, mid the clouds of dust 
the glint of bayonets. 



The Mystic Trumpeter 99 

I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the rosy flash amid 

the smoke, I hear the cracking of the guns; 
Nor war alone — thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings 

every sight of fear. 
The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, murder — I hear the 

cries for help ! 
I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on deck and below ■ 

deck the terrible tableaus. 

7 

trumpeter, methinks I am myself the instrument thou 50 

playest, 
Thou melt'st my heart, my brain — thou movest, drawest, 

changest them at will; 
And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me, 
Thou takest away all cheering light, all hope, 

1 see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest 

of the whole earth, 
I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race, 53 

it becomes all mine, 
Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, 

baffled feuds and hatreds. 
Utter defeat upon me weighs — all lost — the foe victorious, 
(Yet mid the ruins Pride colossal stands unshaken to 

the last. 
Endurance, resolution to the last.) 

8 
Now trumpeter for thy close, eo 

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet. 
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope. 
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future, 
Give me for once its prophecy and joy. 

O glad, exulting, culminating song! os 

A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes, 

Marches of victory — man disenthral'd — the conqueror at last. 



loo American Literary Readings 

Hymns to the universal God from universal man — all joy! 

A reborn race appears — a perfect world, all joy! 
70 Women and men in wisdom innocence and health — all joy! 

Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy! 

War, sorrow, suffering gone — therank earth purged — nothing 
but joy left! 

The ocean fill'd with joy — the atmosphere all joy! 

Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of 
life! 
75 Enough to merely be! enough to breathe! 

Joy! joy! all over joy! 




RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
1803-1882 

Matthew Arnold, in his lecture on Emerson, said that if 
we should judge him perfectly impartially we would have 
to admit that Emerson is not a great poet, not a great prose 
writer, not even a great philosopher, but that he is "pre- 
eminently the friend and aider of those who would live in the 
spirit." In ranking Emerson relatively in American lit- 
erature, however, we do not hesitate to say that he is one of 
our great poets, even though he is not preeminent in this 
field; that he is unquestionably our greatest essayist; and 
that in the moral and spiritual realm he is one of the world's 
great teachers. No educated American can afford to be 
unacquaihted with the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. He was 
descended from a long line of New England ministers, his 
father, Reverend William Emerson, being minister at the First 
Unitarian Church in Boston at the time of Emerson's birth, 
and his grandfather of the same name being minister at 
Concord during the American Revolution. Emerson was 
graduated from Harvard College at the age of eighteen. 
It is said that he attracted no particular notice while he was 
in college, but he made a good record and took some of 
the honors, notably the election to be class poet and the 
second prize in the Boylston contest in English composition. 
Immediately after graduation he engaged in teaching, but 
in 1823 he returned to the divinity school of Harvard 
College and began studying definitely for the ministry. He 
was ordained in 1829, and was at once installed as assistant 
minister in the Second Unitarian Church of Boston. In 
this year he married Miss Ellen Tucker. She did not live 
long, however, and some years later Emerson was married 
to Miss Lidian Jackson, who bore him several children and 
made him a happy home at Concord. Emerson became 
full minister of the Second Church when his colleague 
resigned in 1829, and for over three years he served the 
church acceptably. In 1832 he began to have conscientious 
scruples about his fitness to commemorate the Lord's Supper, 



I02 A}nerican Literary Readings 

and on September 9 of that year he preached his farewell 
sermon and courageously resigned his pulpit. 

Thus thrown on his own resources for a livelihood, Emer- 
son began to lecture and write. He visited Europe in 1833 
and met many famous men of letters, notably Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, Landor, De Quincey, George Eliot, and Cowper. 
On his return he settled in Concord (1834) and took up 
his residence at the famous old house known as the "Old 
Manse," where his grandfather, Reverend William Emerson, 
Sr., had lived, and where Hawthorne later lived and wrote 
Mosses from an Old Manse. The correspondence between 
Emerson and Carlyle, begun at this period, extended to 
the death of Carlyle in 188 1, and the series of letters between 
these two great masters is one of the most notable in all 
English and American literature. The lecture platform 
was from this time on Emerson's pulpit. In fact, it was 
largely through Emerson that lyceum lecturing as a means 
of public entertainment and instruction was first brought 
into favor in this country. He had a marvelously sweet 
and appealing voice, and his fresh, vigorous, tonic messages 
attracted and inspired his audiences even when they did not 
fully understand the import of what he was saying. 

On September 12, 1835, Emerson delivered at Concord 
a speech called "An Historical Discourse on the Second 
Centennial Anniversary of the Incorporation of the Town," 
and when the monument commemorating the battle of Con- 
cord was dedicated on July 4, 1837, he was called upon to 
write a hymn for the occasion. The little poem which he 
produced, and which is included in this volume, has since 
become one of the national poetical treasures. 

In 1836 Emerson's first book, called Nature, appeared. It 
was a small volume of less than one hundred pages, but it was 
packed full of inspiration, idealism, and profound philosophy. 
It was written in a tense, poetical, rhapsodic prose style, 
and naturally it attracted very little attention. Holmes 
calls it a reflective prose poem. It sets forth ideas on nature 
similar to those expressed by Wordsworth in his poetry, 
and it is the seed-field for many of the transcendental ideas 
later developed by Emerson on the constitution of nature, 
God, and the soul of man. The public was not ready for 
such a volume, and not more than five hundred copies of this 
really epoch-making book were sold within twelve years after 
its publication. 



Ralph Waldo Emerson 103 

Nevertheless, Emerson was now rapidly becoming a 
notable figure in the intellectual life of New England. In 
1837 he was asked to deliver the oration before the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society at Cambridge, and he prepared for this 
occasion that notable address, "The American Scholar." 
Lowell spoke of the occasion of its delivery as an event 
"without former parallel in our literary annals," and 
Holmes said, "This great oration was our intellectual 
Declaration of Independence." ^ 

The Essays, First Series, appeared in 1841, and the Second 
Series in 1844. Most of these essays were first given as 
lectures. Naturally the lecturer could polish and revise 
his addresses as he delivered them from time to time, and 
so when he was ready to give them to the world as essays, 
he had put his thought in its finished and final form. There 
is great compression of thought and condensation and preci- 
sion of style in these compositions. It has been said that 
he who runs may read, but this saying cannot be applied to 
Emerson's essays. One must stop and think, and think 
deeply, or else one will miss the best of Emerson's thought. 
No book in our literature is more worthy of one's close study 
and attention, and none will give the young mind such fine 
practice in interpretative mental exercise. In fact, Emer- 
son is one of the most inspiring of all writers ; it is said that 
he has made more thoughtful readers than has any other 
American writer. He is certainly a stimulating mental tonic, 
and every ambitious youth should give his very best effort 
to the mastery of a few of the simpler pieces, and eventually 
should read all twenty-four of the essays in these two 
volumes. For this book we have selected "Heroism" and 
"Compensation"' as two of the most stimulating for young 
readers, but there are many others equally good, not only 
in the two volumes of essays, but in the remaining prose 
works of Emerson. 

Among the other prose books of Emerson are Representative 
Men (1850), English Traits (1850), Conduct of Life (i860). 
Society and Solitude (1870), Letters and Social Aims (1875). 
These are made up largely of lectures and essays similar 
in thought and style to the better known Essays. All 
through the years of his maturity Emerson had the habit 
of jotting down his thoughts in his Journals, and from this 
intellectual storehouse he drew material for his addresses 
and books. This wonderful miscellaneous source book 



I04 American Literary Readings 

for the study of Emerson's thought and the development 
of his mind and character was recently published in ten 
volumes. 

Emerson's style is unique. He said what he had to say 
in brilliant, epigrammatic sentences, often so condensed as 
to be almost unintelligible to the superficial reader. He 
had little smoothness or sweetness of style, though he 
possessed wonderful facility in turning expressive phrases, 
and occasionally he rose into passages of majestic beauty 
and sublimity. He may be said to be weak in the archi- 
tectural or combining and arranging power of style. He 
throws his brilliant sentences and paragraphs together in 
a vague sort of order. There is certainly not that smooth- 
ness in transition that we now expect and demand of the 
average good prose stylist. He said himself that he sought 
no order or harmony of style in his writing. He speaks of 
his sentences as composed of "infinitely repellent particles," 
and he also called his method that of the lapidary who builds 
his house of boulders, piling them up in almost indiscrimi- 
nate masses. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his life of Emerson 
in the American Men of Letters Series, says: "Emerson's 
style is epigrammatic, incisive, authoritative, sometimes 
quaint, never obscure, except when he is handling nebulous 
subjects. His paragraphs are full of brittle sentences that 
break apart and are independent units, like the fragments of 
a coral colony. His imagery is frequently daring, leaping 
from the concrete to the abstract, from the special to the 
general and universal, and vice versa, with a bound that is 
like a flight." 

As a poet Emerson has usually not been ranked high, but 
there are some who consider him the greatest of American 
poets. There is no use denying that he was a mediocre 
poetical craftsman in so far as mere technical excellences 
are concerned. His rhythm is often harsh and wabbly, 
and his rimes are sometimes untrue and even impossible. 
There is little or no steady evolution of thought or largeness 
and finality of treatment in many of his poems, but in others, 
particularly some of the shorter ones, there are an artistic 
finish and a completeness and perfection of expression that 
leave little to be desired. That Emerson was at bottom 
a real poet is no less evident in his best prose than in his best 
poetry. He took the office of poet seriously, and he almost 
always eventually put his finest thoughts into rhythmic 



Ralph Waldo Emerson 105 

form. The poems selected in this volume are sufficient 
evidence that Emerson was a poet of high merit. 

Emerson died April 27, 1882, and was buried near Haw- 
thorne in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. An immense rough 
boulder of rose quartz, typical of the combination of beauty 
and strength in Emerson's genius, now marks his grave. 



HEROISM 

" Paradise is under the shadow of swords." 

Mahomet 

Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, 

Sugar spends to fatten slaves, 

Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons; 

Thunderclouds are Jove's festoons, 
5 Drooping oft in wreaths of dread 

Lightning-knotted round his head; 

The hero is not fed on sweets. 

Daily his own heart he eats; 

Chambers of the great are jails, 
10 And head-winds right for royal sails. 

[i] In the elder English dramatists, and mainly in the 
plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, there is a constant recog- 
nition of gentility, as if a noble behavior were as easily 
marked in the society of their age as color is in our Amer- 

15 ican population. When any Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio 
enters, though he be a stranger, the duke or governor 
exclaims, 'This is a gentleman,' — and proffers civilities 
without end; but all the rest are slag and refuse. In 
harmony with this delight in personal advantages there 

20 is in their plays a certain heroic cast of character and 
dialogue, — as in Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, the 
Double Marriage, — wherein the speaker is so earnest and 
cordial and on such deep grounds of character, that the 
dialogue, on the slightest additional incident in the plot, 

25 rises naturally into poetry. Among many texts take the 
following. The Roman Martius has conquered Athens, — 
all but the invincible spirits of Sophocles, the duke of 
Athens, and Dorigen, his wife. The beauty of the latter 
inflames Martius, and he seeks to save her husband; but 

30 Sophocles will not ask his life, although assured that a 
word will save him, and the execution of both proceeds: — 

[1 06] 



Heroism 107 

Valerius. Bid thy wife farewell. 

Soph. No, I will take no leave. My Dorigen, 
Yonder, above, 'bout Ariadne's crown. 
My spirit shall hover for thee. Prithee, haste. 35 

Dor. Stay, Sophocles, — with this tie up my sight; 
Let not soft nature so transformed be, 
And lose her gentler sexed humanity, 
To make me see my lord bleed. So, 't is well; 

Never one object underneath the sun 40 

Will I behold before my Sophocles: 
Farewell ; now teach the Romans how to die. 

Mar. Dost know what 't is to die? 

Soph. Thou dost not, Martius, 
And, therefore, not what 't is to live; to die 45 

Is to begin to live. It is to end 
An old, stale, weary work and to commence 
A newer and a better. 'T is to leave 
Deceitful knaves for the society 

Of gods and goodness. Thou thyself must part 50 

At last from all thy garlands, pleasures, triumphs. 
And prove thy fortitude what then 'twill do. 

Val. But art not grieved nor vexed to leave thy life thus? 

Soph. Why should I grieve or vex for being sent 
To them I ever loved best? Now I'll kneel, 65 

But with my back toward thee: 't is the last duty 
This trunk can do the gods. 

Mar. Strike, strike, Valerius, 
Or Martius' heart will leap out at his mouth. 

This is a man, a woman. Kiss thy lord, eo 

And live with all the freedom you were wont. 
O love! thou doubly hast afflicted me 
With virtue and with beauty. Treacherous heart, 
My hand shall cast thee quick into my urn, 
Ere thou transgress this knot of piety. 65 

Val. What ails my brother? 

Soph. Martius, O Martius, 
Thou now hast found a way to conquer me. 

Dor, O star of Rome! what gratitude can speak 
Fit words to follow such a deed as this? 70 

Mar. This admirable duke, Valerius, 
With his disdain of fortune and of death, 
Captived himself, has captivated me. 
And though my arm hath ta'en his body here, 

His soul hath subjugated Martius' soul. 75 

By Romulus, he is all soul, I think; 
He hath no flesh, and spirit cannot be gyved. 
Then we have vanquished nothing; he is free, 
And Martius walks now in captivity." 

[2] I do not. readily remember any poem, play, sermon, so 
novel or oration that our press vents in the last few years, 
which goes to the same tune. We have a great many flutes 



io8 American Literary Readings 

and flageolets, but not often the sound of any fife. Yet 
Wordsworth's "Laodamia," and the ode of "Dion," and 

85 some sonnets, have a certain noble music; and Scott will 
sometimes draw a stroke like the portrait of Lord Evandale 
given by Balfour of Burley. Thomas Carlyle, with his nat- 
ural taste for what is manly and daring in character, has 
suffered no heroic trait in his favorites to drop from his bio- 

90 graphical and historical pictures. Earlier, Robert Bums has 
given us a song or two. In the Harleian Miscellanies there 
is an account of the battle of Lutzen which deserves to be 
read. And Simon Ockley's History of the Saracens recounts 
the prodigies of individual valor, with admiration all the more 

95 evident on the part of the narrator that he seems to think 
that his place in Christian Oxford requires of him some 
proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the 
literature of Heroism we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who 
is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe the Brasidas, 

100 the Dion, the Epaminondas, the Scipio of old, and I must 
think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the 
ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the 
despondency and cowardice of our religious and political 
theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools but 

105 of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and has given that 
book its immense fame. 

[3] We need books of this tart cathartic virtue more 
than books of political science or of private economy. Life 
is a festival only to the wise. Seen from the nook and 

110 chimney-side of prudence, it wears a ragged and dangerous 
front. The violations of the laws of nature by our prede- 
cessors and our contemporaries are punished in us also. The 
disease and deformity around us certify the infraction of 
natural, intellectual and moral laws, and often violation on 

115 violation to breed such compound misery. A lock-jaw that 
bends a man's head back to his heels; hydrophobia that 
makes him bark at his wife and babes; insanity that makes 
him eat grass; war, plague, cholera, famine, indicate a certain 



Heroism 109 

ferocity in nature, which, as it had its inlet by human crime, 
must have its outlet by human suffering. Unhappily no 120 
man exists who has not in his own person become to some 
amount a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself 
liable to a share in the expiation. 

[4] Our culture therefore must not omit the arming of 
the man. Let him hear in season that he is bom into the 125 
state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well- 
being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of 
peace, but warned, self-collected and neither defying nor 
dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life 
in his hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and uo 
the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude 
of his behavior. 

[5] Towards all this external evil the man within the 
breast assumes a warlike attitude, and affirms his ability to 
cope single-handed with the infinite army of enemies. To 135 
this military attitude of the soul we give the name of Hero- 
ism. Its rudest form is the contempt for safety and ease, 
which makes the attractiveness of war. It is a self-trust 
which slights the restraints of prudence, in the plenitude of 
its energy and power to repair the harms it may suffer. The uo 
hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake 
his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances to 
his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy 
mirth of universal dissoluteness. There is somewhat not 
philosophical in heroism; there is somewhat not holy in it; 145 
it seems not to know that other souls are of one texture with 
it ; it has pride ; it is the extreme of individual nature. Never- 
theless we must profoundly revere it. There is somewhat 
in great actions which does not allow us to go behind them. 
Heroism feels and never reasons, and therefore is always iso 
right; and although a different breeding, different religion 
and greater intellectual activity would have modified or 
even reversed the particular action, yet for the hero that 
thing he does is the highest deed, and is not open to the 



no American Literary Readings 

155 censure of philosophers or divines. It is the avowal of 
the unschooled man that he finds a quality in him that is 
negligent of expense, of health, of life, of danger, of hatred, 
of reproach, and knows that his will is higher and more 
excellent than all actual and all possible antagonists. 

160 [6] Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of 
mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of 
the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret 
impulse of an individual's character. Now to no other man 
can its wisdom appear as it does to him, for every man must 

165 be supposed to see a little farther on his own proper path than 
any one else. Therefore just and wise men take umbrage 
at his act, until after some little time be past; then they see 
it to be in unison with their acts. All prudent men see that 
the action is clean contrary to a sensual prosperity ; for every 

170 heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external 
good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the 
prudent also extol. 

[7] Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state 
of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last 

176 defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all 
that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth and 
it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty 
calculations and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it 
is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be 

180 wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That 
false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt 
and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is 
almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say then to the 
sugar-plums and cats'- cradles, to the toilet, compliments, 

1S5 quarrels, cards and custard, which rack the wit of all society? 
What joys has kind nature provided for us dear creatures! 
There seems to be no interval between greatness and mean- 
ness. When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is 
its dupe, Yet the little man takes the great hoax so inno- 

190 cently, works in it so headlong and believing, is born red, and 



Heroism 1 1 1 

dies gray, arranging his toilet, attending on his own health, 
laying traps for sweet food and strong wine, setting his heart 
on a horse or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip or a 
little praise, that the great soul cannot choose but laugh at 
such earnest nonsense. "Indeed, these humble considera- 195 
tions make me out of love with greatness. What a disgrace 
it is to me to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thou 
hast, namely, these and those that were the peach-colored 
ones ; or to bear the inventory of thy shirts, as one for super- 
fluity, and one other for use!" 200 

[8] Citizens, thinking after the laws of arithmetic, con- 
sider the inconvenience of receiving strangers at their fire- 
side, reckon narrowly the loss of time and the unusual 
display; the soul of a better quality thrusts back the 
unseasonable economy into the vaults of life, and says, I will 205 
obey the God, and the sacrifice and the fire he will provide. 
Ibn Haukal, the Arabian geographer, describes a heroic 
extreme in the hospitality of Sogd, in Bukharia. "When 
I was in Sogd I saw a great building, like a palace, the gates 
of which were open and fixed back to the wall with large nails. 210 
I asked the reason, and was told that the house had not been 
shut, night or day, for a hundred years. Strangers may 
present themselves at any hour and in whatever number; 
the master has amply provided for the reception of the 
men and their animals and is never happier than when they 215 
tarry for some time. Nothing of the kind have I seen in any 
other country." The magnanimous know very well that 
they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger, — 
so it be done for love and not for ostentation, — do, as it were, 
put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the com- 220 
pensations of the universe. In some way the time they seem 
to lose is redeemed and the pains they seem to take remuner- 
ate themselves. These men fan the flame of hiiman love 
and raise the standard of civil virtue among mankind. But 
hospitality must be for service and not for show, or it pulls 225 
down the host. The brave soul rates itself too high to value 



112 American Literary Readings 

itself by the splendor of its table and draperies. It gives 
what it hath, and all it hath, but its own majesty can lend 
a better grace to bannocks and fair water than belong to city 

230 feasts. 

[9] The temperance of the hero proceeds from the same 
wish to do no dishonor to the worthiness he has. But he 
loves it for its elegancy, not for its austerity. It seems not 
worth his while to be solemn and denounce with bitterness 

235 flesh-eating or wine-drinking, the use of tobacco, or opium, 
or tea, or silk, or gold. A great man scarcely knows how 
he dines, how he dresses; but without railing or precision 
his living is natural and poetic. John Eliot, the Indian 
Apostle, drank water, and said of wine, — "It is a noble, 

240 generous liquor and we should be humbly thankful for it, but, 
as I remember, water was made before it." Better still is 
the temperance of King David, who poured out on the 
ground unto the Lord the water which three of his warriors 
had brought him to drink, at the peril of their lives. 

245 [10] It is told of Brutus, that when he fell on his sword 
after the battle of Philippi, he quoted a line of Euripides, — 
"O Virtue! I have followed thee through life, and I find thee 
at last but a shade." I doubt not the hero is slandered by 
this report. The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its 

250 nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. 
The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is 
enough. Poverty is its ornament. It does not need plenty, 
and can very well abide its loss. 

[11] But that which takes my fancy most in the heroic 

255 class, is the good-humor and hilarity they exhibit. It is a 
height to which common duty can very well attain, to suffer 
and to dare with solemnity. But these rare souls set 
opinion, success, and life at so cheap a rate that they will not 
soothe their enemies by petitions, or the show of sorrow, but 

260 wear their own habitual greatness. Scipio, charged with 
peculation, refuses to do himself so great a disgrace as to 
wait for justification, though he had the scroll of his accounts 



Heroism 113 

in his hands, but tears it to pieces before the tribunes. 
Socrates's condemnation of himself to be maintained in all 
honor in the Prytaneum, during his life, and Sir Thomas 2 65 
More's playfulness at the scaffold, are of the same strain. 
In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Sea Voyage," Juletta tells 
the stout captain and his company, — 

Jul. Why, slaves, 't is in our power to hang ye. 

Master. Very likely, 270 

'T is in our powers, then, to be hanged, and scorn ye. 

These replies are sound and whole. Sport is the bloom and 
glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend 
to take any thing seriously; all must be as gay as the song 
of a canary, though it were the building of cities or the 275 
eradication of old and foolish churches and nations which 
have cumbered the earth long thousands of years. Simple 
hearts put all the history and customs of this world behind 
them, and play their own game in innocent defiance of the 
Blue-Laws of the world; and such would appear, could we see 280 
the human race assembled in vision, like little children frol- 
icking together, though to the eyes of mankind at large they 
wear a stately and solemn garb of works and influences. 

[12] The interest these fine stories have for us, the power 
of a romance over the boy who grasps the forbidden book 2 85 
und.er his bench at school, our delight in the hero, is the main 
fact to our purpose. All these great and transcendent 
properties are ours. If we dilate in beholding the Greek 
energy, the Roman pride, it is that we are already domesticat- 
ing the same sentiment. Let us find room for this great guest 290 
in our small houses. The first step of worthiness will be to 
disabuse us of our superstitious associations with places and 
times, with number and size. Why should these words, 
Athenian, Roman, Asia and England, so tingle in the ear? 
Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, 295 
and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut River and Boston Bay you think paltry places, and 
the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But 



114 American Literary Readings 

here we are; and, if we will tarry a little, we may come to 

300 learn that here is best. See to it only that thyself is here, 
and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels and the 
Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where 
thou sittest. Epaminondas, brave and affectionate, does 
not seem to us to need Olympus to die upon, nor the Syrian 

305 sunshine. He lies very well where he is. The Jerseys were 
handsome ground enough for Washington to tread, and 
London streets for the feet of Milton. A great man makes 
his climate genial in the imagination of men, and its air the 
beloved element of all delicate spirits. That country is the 

310 fairest which is inhabited by the noblest minds. The 
pictures which fill the imagination in reading the actions of 
Pericles, Xenophon, Colum^bus, Bayard, Sidney, Hampden, 
teach us how needlessly mean our life is; that we, by the 
depth of our living, should deck it with more than regal or 

315 national splendor, and act on principles that should interest 
man and nature in the length of our days. 

[13] We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young 
men who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life 
was not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, 

320 when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we 
admire their superiority ; they seem to throw contempt on our 
entire polity and social state ; theirs is the tone of a youthful 
giant who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an 
active profession and the forming Colossus shrinks to the 

325 common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal 
tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but 
the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their 
horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no 
example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What 

330 then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet 
true; and a better valor and a purer truth shall one day 
organize their belief. Or why should a woman liken herself 
to any historical woman, and think, because Sappho, or 
Sevigne, or De Stael, or the cloistered souls who have had 



Heroism 115 

genius and cultivation do not satisfy the imagination and 335 
the serene Themis, none can, — certainly not she? Why 
not? She has a new and unattempted problem to solve, 
perchance that of the happiest nature that ever bloomed. 
Let the maiden, with erect soul, walk serenely on her way, 
accept the hint of each new experience, search in turn all 340 
the objects that solicit her eye, that she may learn the power 
and the charm of her new-born being, which is the kindling 
of a new dawn in the recesses of space. The fair girl who 
repels interference by a decided and proud choice of in- 
fluences, so careless of pleasing, so wilful and lofty, inspires 345 
every beholder with somewhat of her own nobleness. The 
silent heart encourages her; O friend, never strike sail to a 
fear! Come into port greatly, or sail with God the seas. 
Not in vain you live, for every passing eye is cheered and 
refined by the vision. 350 

[14] The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. 
All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of gener- 
osity. But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, 
and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. 
The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the 355 
heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy 
of people in those actions whose excellence is that they 
outrun sympathy and appeal to a tardy justice. If you 
would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to serve 
him, do not take back your words when you find that 36o 
prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own 
act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something 
strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a 
decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard 
given to a young person, — "Always do what you are ses 
afraid to do." A simple manly character need never 'make 
an apology, but should regard its past action with the 
calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the event of 
the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion 
from the battle. 370 



ii6 American Literary Readings 

[15] There is no weakness or exposure for which we 
cannot find consolation in the thought — this is a part of my 
constitution, part of my relation and office to my fellow- 
creature. Has nature covenanted with me that I should 

375 never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure? 
Let us be generous of our dignity as well as of our money. 
Greatness once and for ever has done with opinion. We 
tell our charities, not because we wish to be praised for them, 
not because we think they have great merit, but for our 

380 justification. It is a capital blunder; as you discover when 
another man recites his charities. 

[16] To speak the truth, even with some austerity, to 
live with some rigor of temperance, or some extremes of 
generosity, seems to be an asceticism which common good- 

385 nature would appoint to those who are at ease and in plenty, 
in sign that they feel a brotherhood with the great multitude 
of suffering men. And not only need we breathe and 
exercise the soul by assuming the penalties of abstinence, of 
debt, of solitude, of unpopularity, — but it behooves the 

390 wise man to look with a bold eye into those rarer dangers 
which sometimes invade men, and to familiarize himself 
with disgusting forms of disease, with sounds of execration, 
and the vision of violent death. 

[17] Times of heroism are generally times of terror, 

395 but the day never shines in which this element may not 
work. The circumstances of man, we say, are historically 
somewhat better in this country and at this hour than 
perhaps ever before. More freedom exists for culture. 
It will not now run against an axe at the first step out of 

400 the beaten track of opinion. But whoso is heroic will 
always find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands 
her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution 
always proceeds. It is but the other day that the brave 
Love joy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the 

405 rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was 
better not to live. 



Heroism 117 

[18] I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can 
walk, but after the counsel of his own bosom. Let him 
quit too much association, let him go home much, and 
stablish himself in those courses he approves. The unre- 410 
mitting retention of simple and high sentiments in obscure 
duties is hardening the character to that temper which will 
work with honor, if need be in the tumult, or on the scaffold. 
Whatever outrages have happened to men may befall a man 
again; and very easily in a republic, if there appear any signs 415 
of a decay of religion. Coarse slander, fire, tar and feathers 
and the gibbet, the youth may freely bring home to his mind 
and with what sweetness of temper he can, and inquire how 
fast he can fix his sense of duty, braving such penalties, 
whenever it may please the next newspaper and a sufficient 420 
number of his neighbors to pronounce his opinions incendiary. 

[19] It may calm the apprehension of calamity in the 
most susceptible heart to see how quick a bound Nature has 
set to the utmost infliction of malice. We rapidly approach 
a brink over which no enemy can follow us: — 42s 

"Let them rave: 
Thou art quiet in thy grave." 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what shall be, in the hour 
when we are deaf to the higher voices, who does not envy 
those who have seen safely to an end their manful endeavor? 430 
Who that sees the meanness of our politics but inly con- 
gratulates Washington that he is long already wrapped in 
his shroud, and for ever safe; that he was laid sweet in his 
grave, the hope of humanity not yet subjugated in him? 
Who does not sometimes envy the good and brave who are 435 
no more to suffer from the tumults of the natural world, 
and await with curious complacency the speedy term of his 
own conversation with finite nature ? And yet the love that 
will be annihilated sooner than treacherous has already made 
death impossible, and affirms itself no mortal but a native 440 
of the deeps of absolute and inextinguishable being. 



ii8 American Literary Readings 

COMPENSATION 

The wings of Time are black and white, 
Pied with morning and with night. 
Mountain tall and ocean deep 
Trembling balance duly keep. 
In changing moon, in tidal wave, 
Glows the feud of Want and Have. 
Gauge of more and less through space 
Electric star and pencil plays. 
The lonely Earth amid the balls 
That hurry through the eternal halls, 
A makeweight flying to the void, 
Supplemental asteroid, 
Or compensatory spark, 
Shoots across the neutral Dark. 



15 Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine. 

Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: 

Though the frail ringlets thee deceive. 

None from its stock that vine can reave. 

Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
20 There 's no god dare wrong a worm. 

Laurel crowns cleave to deserts 

And power to him who power exerts; 

Hast not thy share? On winged feet, 

Lo! it rushes thee to meet; 
25 And all that Nature made thy own, 

Floating in air or pent in stone. 

Will rive the hills and swim the sea 

And, like thy shadow, follow thee. 

[i] Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a 

30 discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very 

young that on this subject Hfe was ahead of theology and 

the people knew more than the preachers taught. The 

docimients too from which the doctrine is to be drawn, 

charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always 

35 before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, 

the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the 

farm and the dwelling-house; greetings, relations, debts 

and credits, the influence of character, the nature and 

endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it 

40 might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of 

the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition; 

and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation 



Compensation 119 

of eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was 
always and always must be, because it really is now. It 
appeared moreover that if this doctrine could be stated in 45 
terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in 
which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a 
star in many dark hours and crooked passages in our journey, 
that would not suffer us to lose our way. 

[2] I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing 50 
a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his 
orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine 
of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not 
executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that 
the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and 55 
from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties 
in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the 
congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe 
when the meeting broke up they separated without remark 
on the sermon. eo 

[3] Yet what was the import of this teaching? What 
did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable 
in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, 
wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by tmprincipled men, 
whilst the saints are poor and despised ; and that a compen- es 
sation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them 
the like gratifications another day,— bank-stock and 
doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the 
compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are 
to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? 70 
Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the 
disciple would draw was, — * We are to have such a good time 
as the sinners have now'; — or, to push it to its extreme 
import,- — 'You sin now, we shall sin by and by; we would sin 
now, if we could; not being successful we expect our revenge 75 
to-morrow.' 

[4] The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the 
bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The 



I20 American Literary Readings 

blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base 

80 estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, 
instead of confronting and convicting the world frorn/ the 
truth ; announcing the presence of the soul ; the omnipotence 
of the will; and so establishing the standard of good and ill, 
of success and falsehood. 

85 [5] I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day and the same doctrines assumed by the 
literary men when occasionally they treat the related topics. 
I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, 
and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. 

90 But men are better than their theology. Their daily life 
gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves 
the doctrine behind him in his own experience, and all men 
feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. 
For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear 

95 in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said in con- 
versation would probably be questioned in silence. If a 
man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the 
divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well 
enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but 
100 his incapacity to make his own statement. 

[6] I shall attempt in this and the following chapter 
to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
Compensation ; happy beyond my expectation if I shall truly 
draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

105 [7] Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in 
the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the 
inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the 
equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal 

nobody; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undu- 
lations of fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and cen- 
tripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical 
affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle, 



Compensation 121 

the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the 
south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must 115 
condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so 
that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make 
it whole; as, spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; sub- 
jective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, 
nay. 120 

[8] Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its 
parts. The entire system of things gets represented in 
every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the 
ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, 
in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each 125 
individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in 
tiie elements, is repeated within these small boundaries. 
For example, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has 
observed that no creatures are favorites, but a certain 
compensation balances every gift and every defect. A uo 
surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from 
another part of the same creature. If the head and neck 
are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. 

: [9] The theory of the mechanic forces is another 
example. What we gain in power is lost in time, and the 135 
converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the 
planets is another instance. The influences of climate and 
soil in political history is another. The cold climate invig- 
orates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, 
tigers or scorpions. uo 

[10] The same dualism underlies the nature and condi- 
tion of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect an 
excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. 
Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal 
penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation us 
with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. 
For every thing you have missed, you have gained some- 
thing else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. 
If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the 



12 2 American Literary Readings 

ISO gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what 
she puts into his chest ; swells the estate, but kills the owner. 
Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the 
sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest 
tossing than the varieties of condition tend to equalize them- 

155 selves. There is always some levelling circumstance that 
puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortu- 
nate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is 
a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and 
position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian, with a dash of the 

160 pirate in him? — Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons 
and daughters who are getting along in the dame's classes 
at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths 
his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate 
the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb 

165 in and keeps her balance true. 

[ii] The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
things. But the President has paid dear for his White 
House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best 
of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so 

170 conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content 
to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind 
the throne. Or do men desire the more substantial and 
permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immun- 
ity. He who by force of will or of thought is great and 

175 overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. 
With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he 
light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun 
that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by 
his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must 

180 hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that 
the world loves and admires and covets? — he must cast 
behind him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness 
to his truth, and become a byword and a hissing. 

[12] This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It 

185 is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things 



Compensation 123 

refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolimt diu male admin- 
istrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks 
exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the 
governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue 
will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code san- loo 
guinary, juries will not convict. If the law is too mild, 
private vengeance comes in. If the government is a terrific 
democracy, the pressure is resisted by an over-charge of 
energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. The 
true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost 195 
rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves 
with great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. 
Under all governments the influence of character remains 
the same, — in Turkey and in New England about alike. 
Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly 200 
confesses that man must have been as free as culture could 
make him. 

[13] These appearances indicate the fact that the 
universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every 
thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. Every 205 
thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one 
type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse as a 
running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying 
man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not 
only the main character of the type, but part for part all the 210 
details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, energies and 
whole system of every other. Every occupation, trade, 
art, transaction, is a compend of the world and a correlative 
of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of himian 
life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and 215 
its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the 
whole man and recite all his destiny. 

[14] The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The 
microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect 
for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, 220 
appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on 



124 American Literary Readings 

eternity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. 
So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of 
omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every 

225 moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to 
throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is 
the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so 
the limitation. 

[15] Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 

230 That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is 
a law. We feel its inspiration ; out there in history we can 
see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the 
world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A per- 
fect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. Oi 

235 Kv/3ot /:lio<; aei evninrovdi, — The dice of God are always 
loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or 
a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, 
balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, 
nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is 

240 told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, 
every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we 
call retribution is the universal necessity by which the 
whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, 
there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you 

245 know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. 
[16] Every act rewards itself, or in other words inte- 
grates itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in 
real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in apparent 
nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. The 

250 causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the soul. 
The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the under- 
standing ; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread 
over a long time and so does not become distinct until after 
many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the 

255 offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime 
and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a 
fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure 



Compensation 125 

which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, 
seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already 
blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the 260 
fruit in the seed. 

[17] Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses 
to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to 
appropriate; for example, — to gratify the senses we sever 
the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. 265 
The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the 
solution of one problem, — how to detach the sensual sweet, 
the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral 
sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to 
contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave 270 
it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end. The 
soul says, 'Eat'; the body would feast. The soul says, 
' The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul' ; the 
body would join the flesh only. The soul says, 'Have 
dominion over all things to the ends of virtue' ; the body 275 
would have the power over things to its own ends. 

[18] The soul strives amain to live and work through 
all things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be 
added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The 
particular man aims to be somebody; to set up for himself; 280 
to truck and higgle for a private good; and, in particulars, 
to ride that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; to 
eat that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. 
Men seek to be great; they would have offlces, wealth, power, 
and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side 285 
of nature, — the sweet, without the other side, the bitter. 

[19] This dividing and detaching is steadily counter- 
acted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has 
had the smallest success. The parted water reunites 
behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, 290 
profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, 
as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole. We 
can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, 



126 American Literary Readings 

than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a 

295 light without a shadow. "Drive out Nature with a fork, 
she conies running back." 

[20] Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which 
the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that 
he does not know, that they do not touch him; — but the 

300 brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he 
escapes them in one part they attack him in another more 
vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the 
appearance, it is because he has resisted his life and fled from 
himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal 

305 is the failure of all attempts to make this separation of 
the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be 
tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but for the circum- 
stance that when the disease began in the will, of rebellion 
and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the 

310 man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to 
see the sensual allurement of an object and not see the 
sensual hurt ; he sees the mermaid's head but not the dragon's 
tail, and thinks he can cut off that which he would have from 
that which he would not have. "How secret art thou who 

315 dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great 
God, sprinkling with an unwearied providence certain penal 
blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires!" 

[21] The human soul is true to these facts in the paint- 
ing of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation. 

320 It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks 
called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally 
ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made 
amends to reason by tying up the hands of so bad a god. 
He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus 

325 knows one secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, 

another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps 

the key of them: — 

"Of all the gods, I only know the keys 
That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 
330 His thunders sleep." 



Compensation 127 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All and of its 
moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics; 
and it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented 
and get any currency which was not moral. Aurora forgot 
to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is immortal, 335 
he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable; the sacred 
waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis held him. 
Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a 
leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the dragon's 
blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it 340 
must be. There is a crack in every thing God has made. It 
would seem there is always this vindictive circumstance 
stealing in at unawares even into the wild poesy in which 
the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday and to 
shake itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick 345 
of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal; that in nature 
nothing can be given, all things are sold. 

[22] This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps 
watch in the universe and lets no offence go unchastised. 
The Furies they said are attendants on justice, and if the 350 
sun in heaven should transgress his path they would punish 
him. The poets related that stone walls and iron swords 
and leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs 
of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged 
the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of 355 
Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that 
on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when the 
Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, 
one of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to throw 
it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from 36o 
its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall. 

[23] This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It 
came from thought above the will of the writer. That is 
the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it ; 
that which he does not know; that which flowed out of his 365 
constitution and not from his too active invention ; that which 



128 American Literary Readings 

in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but 
in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit of them 
all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early 

370 Hellenic world that I would know. The name and circum- 
stance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarrass 
when we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that 
which man was tending to do in a given period, and was 
hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering 

375 volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ 
whereby man at the moment wrought. 

[24] Still more striking is the expression of this fact in 
the proverbs of all nations, which are always the literature 
of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without 

380 qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred books of each 
nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions. That which the 
droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the 
realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in prov- 
erbs without contradiction. And this law of laws, which the 

385 pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in 
all markets and workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teach- 
ing is as true and as omnipresent as that of birds and flies. 
[25] All things are double, one against another. — Tit 
for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for 

390 blood; measure for measure; love for love. — Give, and it shall 
be given you. — He that watereth shall be watered himself. 
— What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take it. — 
Nothing venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly 
for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — Who doth not 

895 work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses 
always recoil on the head of him who imprecates them. — 
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end 
fastens itself around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the 
adviser. — The Devil is an ass. 

400 [26] It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our will by 
the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from 



Cdmpensatton 129 

the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible 
magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. 

[27] A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With 405 
his will or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye 
of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts 
on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, 
but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or rather 
it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, 410 
a coil of cord in the boat, and, if the harpoon is not good, or 
not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain 
or to sink the boat. 

[28] You cannot do wrong without suffering' wrong. 
"No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious 41s 
to him, " said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does 
not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the 
attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does 
not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving 
to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins and 420 
you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, 
you shall lose your own. The senses would make things 
of all persons; of women, of children, of the poor. The 
vulgar proverb, "I will get it from his purse or get it from 
his skin," is sound philosophy. 425 

[29] All infractions of love and equity in our social 
relations are speedily punished. They are punished by 
fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow- 
man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as 
water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with 430 
perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as 
soon as there is any. departure from simplicity and attempt 
at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my 
neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have 
shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war 435 
between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. 

[30] All the old abuses in society, universal and partic- 
ular, all unjust accumulations of property and power, are 



130 American Literary Readings 

avenged in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great 

440 sagacity and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he 
teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is 
a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers 
for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our 
laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for 

445 ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government 
and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. 
He indicates great wrongs which must be revised. 

[31] Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
which instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary 

450 activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald of 
Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads 
every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble 
asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the 
balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. 

455 [32] Experienced men of the world know very well that 
it is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man 
often pays dear for a small frugality. The borrower runs in 
his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has received 
a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by 

460 borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's 
wares, or horses, or money? There arises on the deed the 
instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part and of 
debt on the other; that is, of superiority and inferiority. The 
transaction remains in the memory of himself and his 

465 neighbor; and every new transaction alters according to its 
nature their relation to each other. He may soon come to 
see that he had better have broken his own bones than to 
have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that "the highest 
price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." 

470 [33] A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of 
life, and know that it is the part of prudence to face every 
claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your 
talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first or last you 
must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand 



Compensation 131 

for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postpone- 475 
ment. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are 
wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with 
more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit 
which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who confers 
the most benefits. He is base, — and that is the one base 48o 
thing in the universe, — to receive favors and render none. 
In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those 
from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the 
benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed 
for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much 485 
good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm 
worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 

[34] Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we 
buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application 490 
of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your 
land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gar- 
dening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in 
the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in 
your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So 495 
do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself through- 
out your estate. But because of the dual constitution of 
things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The 
thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. 
For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof 500 
wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, 
may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they repre- 
sent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited 
or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by 
real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. 505 
The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the 
knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest 
care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, 
Do the thing, and you shall have the power; but they who 
do not the thing have not the power. 5 10 



132 American Literary Readings 

[35] Human labor, through all its forms, from the 
sharpening of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, 
is one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of 
the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the 

515 doctrine that every thing has its price, — and if that price 
is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, 
and that it is impossible to get anything without its price, — 
is not less sublime in the columns of a leger than in the 
budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the 

520 action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high 
laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with 
which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his 
chisel-edge, which are measured out by his pliunb and foot- 
rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as 

525 in the history of a state — do recommend to him his trade, and 

though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. 

[36] The league between virtue and nature engages all 

things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws 

and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. 

530 He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but 
there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. Commit 
a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, 
and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as 
reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox 

535 and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, 
you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up 
the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Some damning 
circimistance always transpires. The laws and substances 
of nature, — water, snow, wind, gravitation, — become penal- 

540 ties to the thief. 

[37] On the other hand the law holds with equal sure- 
ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All 
love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an 
algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which 

545 like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you can- 
not do him any harm; but as the royal armies sent against 



Compensation 133 

Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colors and 
from enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as 
sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors: — 

" Winds blow and waters roll 550 

Strength to the brave and power and deity, 
Yet in themselves are nothing." 

[38] The good are befriended even by weakness and 
defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not 
injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not 555 
somewhere made useful to him. The stag in the fable 
admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter 
came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the 
thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime - 
needs to thank his faults. As no man thoroughly under- seo 
stands a truth until he has contended against it, so no man 
has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents 
of men until he has suffered from the one and seen the tri- 
umph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he 
a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? 565 
Thereby he is driven to entertain himself alone and acquire 
habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he 
mends his shell with pearl. 

[39] Our strength grows out of our weakness. The 
indignation which arms itself with secret forces does not 570 
awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. 
A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits 
on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he 
is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn 
something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; 575 
he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the 
insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The 
wise man throws himself on the side of his assailants. It 
is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. 
The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin 5 so 
and when they would tritmiph, lo! he has passed on invul- 
nerable. Blame is safer than praise. I hate to be defended 



134 American Literary Readings 

in a newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against 
me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as 

5 85 honeyed words of praise are spoken for me I feel as one that 

lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil 

to which we do not succumb is a benefactor. As the 

Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of 

^ the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength 

590 of the temptation we resist. 

[40] The same guards which protect us from disaster, 
defect and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfishness 
and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institu- 
tions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men 

^95 suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition that 
they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to 
be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and 
not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party 
to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes 

600 on itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of every contract, so 
that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an un- 
grateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. 
Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is 
withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on 

605 compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. 

[41] The history of persecution is a history of endeavors 

to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope 

of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many 

or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies 

610 voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason and traversing 
its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the 
nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its 
actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes 
a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather 

615 justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and 
persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank 
of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy 
aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns 



Compensation 135 

their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be 
dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every 620 
prison a more illustrious abode ; every burned book or house 
enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word 
reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours 
of sanity and consideration are always arriving to com- 
munities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen and the 625 
martyrs are justified. 

[42] Thus do all things preach the indifferency of 
circimistances. The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a 
good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to 
be content. But the doctrine of compensation is not the doc- eso 
trine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these 
representations, — What boots it to do well ? there is one event 
to good and evil ; if I gain any good I must pay for it ; if I lose 
any good I gain some other; all actions are indifferent. 

[43] There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensa- ess 
tion, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, 
but a life. The soul is. • Under all this running sea of 
circiunstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect 
balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence, 
or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being 64o 
is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, 
and swallowing up all relations, parts, and times within 
itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. 
Vice is the absence or departure of the same. Nothing, 
Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade on 645 
which as a background the living universe paints itself 
forth, but no fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is 
not. It cannot work any good; it cannot work any harm. 
It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. 

[44] We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil eso 
acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy 
and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in 
visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his non- 
sense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted 



136 American Literary Readings 

\ 

655 the law? Inasmuch as he carries the maHgnity and the He 
with him he so far deceases from nature. In some manner 
there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the under- 
standing also; but, should we not see it, this deadly- 
deduction makes square the eternal account. 

600 [45] Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the 
gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no 
penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper 
additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly am; in a 
virtuous act I add to the world ; I plant into deserts conquered 

665 from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness receding on 
the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, 
none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes 
are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses limits, 
and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism, 

670 [46] His life is a progress, and not a station. His 
instinct is trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" m 
application to man, of the presence of the soul, and not of 
its absence; the brave man is greater than the coward; the 
true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, 

675 than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the good of 
virtue, for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute 
existence, without any comparative. Material good has 
its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no root in 
me, and the next wind will blow it away. But all the good 

680 of nature is the soul's, and may be had if paid for in nature's 
lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the head 
allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for 
example to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings 
with it new burdens. I do not wish more external goods, — 

685 neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. 
The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no 
tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists and 
that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice 
with a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of 

690 possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard, — 



Compensation 137 

"Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm 
that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real 
sufferer but by my own fault." 

[47] In the nature of the soul is the compensation for 
the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature 095 
seems to be the distinction of More and Less. How can 
Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or malev- 
olence towards More? Look at those who have less 
faculty, and one feels sad and knows not well what to make 
of it. He almost shuns their eye ; he fears they will upbraid 700 
God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. 
But see the facts nearly and these mountainous inequalities 
vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the iceberg 
in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this 
bitterness oi,His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my 705 
brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and 
outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still 
receive ; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he 
loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is 
my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and 710 
the estate I so admired and envied is my own. It is the 
nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus and 
Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer 
and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His 
virtue, — is not that mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made 715 
mine, it is not wit. 

[48] Such also is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the prosperity of 
men are advertisements of a nature w^hose law is growth, 
Every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole 720 
system of things, its friends and home and laws and faith, 
as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, 
because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms 
a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual 
these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind 725 
they are incessant and all worldly relations hang very 



138 American Literary Readings 

loosely about him, becoming as it were a transparent fluid 
membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, 
as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many 

730 dates and of no settled character, in which the man is 
imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the man 
of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And 
such should be the outward biography of man in time, a 
putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews 

735 his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed estate, 
resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating with the 
divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. 

[49] We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let 
our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that 

740 archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We 
do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity 
and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in 
to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We 
linger in the ruins of the old tent where once we had bread 

745 and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, 
cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so 
dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. 
The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and onward for ever- 
more!' We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we 

750 rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like 
those monsters who look backwards. 

[50] And yet the compensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of 
time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss 

755 of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid 
loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep 
remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear 
friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but 
privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or 

760 genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of 
life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was 
waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a 



Concord Hymn 139 

household, or style of living, and allows the formation of 
new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It 
permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances 76 5 
and the reception of new influences that prove of the first 
importance to the next years; and the man or woman who 
would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room 
for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling 
of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the 770 
banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide 
neighborhoods of men. 



CONCORD HYMN 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, 
APRIL 19, 1836 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood. 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

We set to-day a votive stone; 
That memory may their deed redeem, 

When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



I40 American Literary Readings 

THE RHODORA: 

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER? 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 

To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 

The purple petals, fallen in the pool. 

Made the black water with their beauty gay; 

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 

And court the flower that cheapens his array. 

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky. 

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 

I never thought to ask, I never knew: 

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 

The self -same Power that brought me there brought you. 

THE HUMBLE-BEE 

Burly, dozing humble-bee. 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
Far-off heats through seas to seek; 
I will follow thee alone. 
Thou animated torrid-zone! 
Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 
Let me chase thy waving lines; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 

Insect lover of the sun, 
Joy of thy dominion ! 



The Humble-Bee 141 

Sailor of the atmosphere; 

Swimmer through the waves of air; 

Voyager of light and noon; 15] 

Epicurean of June ; 

Wait, I prithee, till I come 

Within earshot of thy hum, — 

All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 20 

With a net of shining haze 

Silvers the horizon wall. 

And with softness touching all, 

Tints the human countenance 

With a color of romance, 25 

And infusing subtle heats. 

Turns the sod to violets, 

Thou, in sunny solitudes, 

Rover of the underwoods. 

The green silence dost displace so ' 

With thy mellow, breezy bass. 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 

Tells of countless sunny hours, 

Long days, and solid banks of flowers; ss ' 

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 

In Indian wildernesses found; 

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 

Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 40 

Hath my insect never seen ; 

But violets and bilberry bells, 

Maple-sap and daffodels, 

Grass with green flag half-mast high, 

Succory to match the sky, 4e 



142 American Literary Readings 

Columbine with horn of honey, 
Scented fern, and agrimony, 
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue, 
And brier-roses, dwelt among; 
All beside was unknown waste; 
All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer. 
Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 
Seeing only what is fair. 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care. 
Leave the chaff and take the wheat. 
When the fierce northwestern blast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast, 
Thou already sl-umberest deep; 
Woe and want thou canst outsleep; 
Want and woe, which torture us. 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



DAYS 

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 

Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes. 

And marching single in an endless file. 

Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 

To each they offer gifts after his will. 

Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. 

I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp. 

Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 

Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 

Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 

Under hqr solemn fillet saw the scorn. 




NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
1804-1864 

Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in the seacoast town of 
Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804, was descended from 
two generations of sea captains and from a long line of 
Puritan magistrates and warriors. Among his progenitors 
on his father's side were some who persecuted the Quakers 
and authorized the executions of witches in the celebrated 
Salem witchcraft delusion. It is said that the curse of one 
of the sufferers lingered like a black blot in the blood, and it 
has been suggested that the dark and gloomy cast of 
Hawthorne's genius was traceable to this ancestral source. 
His mother was a Manning, another distinguished Puritan 
family, and so we may certainly say that Hawthorne came 
naturally by that Puritan conscience of which he was to 
become the renowned artistic interpreter. 

When he was four years old, his father died while away on 
a sea voyage, and his mother shut herself up from the world 
in a sort of life-long grief. After several years she moved to 
the large Manning land holdings on Sebago Lake, Maine, 
and here Nathaniel lived from his ninth until his four- 
teenth year. As he afterwards declared, this was one of the 
bright periods in his rather gloomy and solitary early life. 
"I ran quite wild," he wrote, "and would, I doubt not, have 
willingly run wild till this time, fishing all day long, or 
shooting with an old fowling-piece; but reading a good deal, 
too, on the rainy days, especially in Shakespeare and The 
Pilgrim's Progress." This last book, along with another 
early favorite of Hawthorne's, Spenser's Faerie Queeyie, is 
significant as the source of his delight in the creation of 
allegorical settings for his own stories. 

His mother returned to Salem to seek means of education 
for her three children. She selected a tutor for Nathaniel, 
and within two years he was ready to enter Bowdoin College. 
Franklin Pierce, afterwards president of the United States, 
was one class ahead of Hawthorne, and Longfellow was in 
the same class, that of 1825. Hawthorne made a few close 
friendships, notably with Pierce and Horatio Bridge, the 

[143] 



144 American Literary Readings 

last named being his most intimate friend, and the one who 
believed in him and had most influence in turning him toward 
authorship. 

After graduation Hawthorne went back to Salem, where 
his mother still lived. And in "a solitary chamber under 
the eaves" of the house on Herbert Street, not far from 
where he was born, he developed through the next twelve 
years his powerful and original literary style. All the 
members of the family were seclusive in their habits. The 
two sisters kept to their rooms, the mother had her meals 
served in her separate apartment, and naturally in such a 
household, Hawthorne developed to the fullest extent what 
he called his "cursed habit of solitude." He published 
anonymously an immature novel called Fanshawe in 1828, 
but he afterwards wished to withdraw it from circulation. 
He became extremely fastidious about the finish and style 
of his work, and it is said that during this period of his 
literary apprenticeship he wrote and rewrote and then 
burned many tales and sketches. He published a few pieces 
in the New England Magazine and in the early issues of 
The Token, a Boston annual; and under G. C. Goodrich's 
editorship of The Token he increased his contributions to this 
annual, so that within a few years he had published enough 
stories to make up the first edition of the happily christened 
Twice-told Tales (1837). This volume was subsequently 
(1842) enlarged from eighteen to thirty-nine tales, and it has 
since held its place as one of the few permanent short-story 
collections in our literature. Mosses from an Old Manse 
(1846) and The Snow Image and Other Twice-told Tales (1852) 
are similar collections. Except for the work of Poe and Irving 
nothing has yet appeared in our literature that can be com- 
pared with these tales for finish of style, literary art, and 
profound analysis of the various phases of human life. 
Part of them are mere sketches or essays, others are based 
on historical incidents, but most of them are woiks of pure 
fancy and imagination. Even when the skeleton or basal 
facts are historical, the real flesh and blood, the creative 
part of the story, is almost entirely imaginative and original. 
It is almost impossible to select the best of these stories for 
special mention. Every critic of the volumes seems to 
light upon different ones as the best, and no two persons 
are found to agree. We have selected for our purpose three 
stories that have met with general approval and certainly 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 145 

three that well represent Hawthorne's art at its best — 
"The Great Carbuncle," "The Ambitious Guest," and 
"The Wedding-Knell." 

It was the publication of Twice-told Tales that led to Haw- 
thorne's acquaintance, and later engagement and marriage, 
with Miss Sophia Peabody. Elizabeth Peabody, the elder 
sister, became interested in the author of these exquisite 
short stories, and through her friendship with Hawthorne's 
sisters she invited Hawthorne to call at her home. Here 
he met the youngest of the three sisters, Sophia, and even 
though she was something of an invalid at this time, her 
bright, well-trained mind and her artistic temperament 
— for she was gifted with brush and pencil — attracted the 
romancer from his social seclusion. Her beneficent influence 
caused the petals of his soul to expand like a flower in the 
spring sunshine. She was similarly attracted by his classic, 
masculine features and athletic- frame as well as by the 
wonderful charm of his mind. Their love story, since given 
to the public in Hawthorne's letters, is one of the sweetest 
and happiest in the annals of literature. She gave him 
encouragement and stimulus and love, and he gave her life 
and home and happiness. Her health improved after her 
marriage, and three children were born to them, Una, 
Julian, and Rose. 

But when Hawthorne met Miss Peabody he was not able 
to support an invalid wife; so the engagement ran on for 
four years before the marriage took place in 1842. George 
Bancroft, in the meantime, used his influence to have Haw- 
thorne appointed to the position of weigher and ganger at the 
Boston Custom House. He labored at this, to him, unsavory 
task for two years, and then took his savings of one thousand 
dollars and invested them in the impractical social com- 
munity of Brook Farm, a transcendental experiment in 
which physical labor and intellectual activities were to be 
alternately and equally enjoyed. The experiment proved 
a failure, of course, and Hawthorne lost his money. In 
spite of this serious loss, however, he determined now to 
marry. He took his wife to the Old Manse in Concord, 
the house already made famous by Em^erson's residence 
in it, and now made doubly so by Hawthorne's occupancy; 
and there he began the long and desperate struggle of 
making a living by his pen. The story of these impecu- 
nious years has been fully told by the family letters, and the 



146 American Literary Readings 

happy way in which the couple met their difficulties will 
always arouse interest. Once Mrs. Hawthorne, noticing a 
large tear in one of her husband's garments, remarked that 
it was strange that they did not have more ready money, 
since her husband was a man of such large rents. She 
fairly worshiped him, and he was as devoted to her, and 
this made these years of poverty not only endurable but 
happy ones. 

Friends came to the rescue again, and Hawthorne was 
appointed collector, or surveyor, of the port of Salem. 
This gave him a better immediate income, but it cut off 
his literary productivity for a time. He planned a larger 
work on the basis of some old records which he found in 
the office at Salem, but the work did not progress satis- 
factorily. When he announced his removal from office in 
1849, Mrs. Hawthorne complacently remarked, "Oh, then 
you can write your book!" And when the impractical 
dreamer wanted to know what they could live on while it was 
being written, she disclosed a pile of gol^ coins which she had 
saved out of her weekly allowance for household expenses and 
hidden away for just such an emergency. The book was 
written; it was The Scarlet Letter, by common consent 
designated as the one absolutely great masterpiece of fiction 
in all American literature. Hawthorne's friend, James T. 
Field, the publisher, came over from Boston toward the end 
of the year and found the germ of the manuscript already 
in shape, and in 1850 the enlarged romance was published. 
It took the public by storm and has ever since retained its 
position as the" greatest American novel. 

After the phenomenal success of The Scarlet Letter, Haw- 
thorne's period of being what he called "the obscurest 
man of letters in America" was over. He moved to "the 
little red cottage" near Lennox in the Berkshire Hills of 
western Massachusetts, and here he wrote the second of his 
four great romances. The House oj the Seven Gables (185 1). 
Here, also, those delightful books for young readers. The 
Wonder -Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853), both 
based on the old Greek and Roman hero myths, were pro- 
duced. Grandfather' s Chair ( 1 84 1 ) and several other juvenile 
books had been written much earlier; and with these new 
volumes and several other childhood pieces, like "The Snow 
Image" and "Little Daffydowndilly," the contributions of 
Hawthorne to our juvenile classics are very important. 



Nathaniel Hawthorne 147 

During 1852 Hawthorne moved his family to West Newton, 
a suburb of Boston, and here he produced his third great 
novel, The Blithedale Romance, reflecting largely his experi- 
ences at Brook Farm in Roxbury, not very far from West 
Newton. He had not yet found the home to suit him, 
however, and so he purchased the old house of the Alcotts in 
Concord near Emerson's residence, and christened it "The 
Wayside." 

In this year, 1852, Hawthorne wrote a campaign life of his 
friend Franklin Pierce, who was now a candidate for the 
presidency. Naturally, upon being elected. President 
Pierce desired to reward his friend and supporter, and 
consequently he appointed him to be consul at Liverpool, 
England. This was a lucrative position, and the income 
from the office, together with the increased returns from 
his books, put Hawthorne and his family above want for 
the remainder of his life. He did not enjoy the work nor the 
honors of his new position, but he went through the routine 
with the same punctilious devotion to duty that he had 
shown in his previous official positions. The literary results 
of this residence abroad were Our Old Home; a Series oj 
English Sketches, published in the Atlantic Monthly some 
years later, and the last of his great romances, The Marble 
Faun, written at Rome and published in England imder the 
title The Transformed in i860. 

After the appearance of The Marble Faun, Hawthorne 
returned to his home in Concord. Here he attempted some 
further literary work, but his health was gradually giving 
way, and the old creative impulse was almost gone. He 
started several romances, among them Septimus Felton, 
Dr. Grimshaw's Secret, and The Dolliver Romance, but none 
of them were satisfactorily completed. In a vain search 
for improvement in health, he went on a carriage trip with 
Franklin Pierce through the mountains of New Hampshire. 
When they reached Portsmouth, his strength gave out and 
he died alone in his room in an inn, May 17, 1864. He was 
buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, his grave being now 
marked with a plain marble headboard not over a foot high 
bearing the simple inscription "Hawthorne." 

Three things make Hawthorne's work great — first, the 
originality and spontaneity of his conceptions; second, the 
fundamental moral truth and spiritual purity underlying 
these conceptions; and third, the supreme artistry of the 



148 • American Literary Readings 

form of expression in which he has presented these concep- 
tions. No writer in America has depended more absolutely 
and more consistently on his own ideas and instincts as to 
what material was best suited to his genius. Hawthorne's 
work is unique because his genius was unique, and because 
he allowed it to mature slowly and naturally, without the 
intermixture of foreign elements or the distraction of foreign 
models. There is no English author with whom we care to 
compare him, for he was too original, too much himself to be 
like any one of them. In the second place, while he dealt 
with sin and the human conscience and some of the darker 
aspects of life, he handled these problems with the utmost 
purity of conception. Some parents do not wish for their 
daughters to read The Scarlet Letter, but they are merely 
obsessed with a mistaken idea. There never was a purer 
book nor a more powerful appeal for Christlike charity 
toward those who have sinned and felt all the awful pangs 
of expiation and the final purification of character through 
repentance and steadfast resistance. So it is with all 
Hawthorne's works; there is not a word of sacrilege, nor a 
hint of encouragement to the evil-doer, nor a cause for a 
blush on the cheek of the purest-minded maiden. Finally, 
also, in his style, Hawthorne is a supreme artist. His manner 
of expression sits as naturally on him as his own features. 
There is no strut, no superficial veneer, no painfully evident 
striving after effect, no trick or artifice, but every word and 
phrase is as natural and easy and spontaneous as the con- 
ception which gave it birth. The picturesqueness, the vivid 
character portrayal, the music and rhythm of his prose 
cadences, the apt and precise diction, the dominant tone of 
spirituality, the suggestive other- worldliness- — in short, the 
pure artistry of his style — all this undoubtedly places him 
in the first rank of American literary artists. 

(The best life of Hawthorne is by George E. Woodberry in the 
American Men of Letters Series. Henry James, Jr., has also written a 
brilliant criticism in the English Men of Letters Series.) 



THE AMBITIOUS GUEST 

One September night a family had gathered round 
their hearth and piled it high with the driftwood of moun- 
tain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered 
ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the preci- 
pice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the 5 
room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and 
mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed. The 
eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen, 
and the aged grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest 
place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had 10 
found the "herb heart ' s-ease " in the bleakest spot of all 
New England. This family were situated in the Notch of 
the White Hills, where the wind was sharp throughout the 
year, and pitilessly cold in the winter, giving their cottage 
all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley of 15 
the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one, 
for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that 
the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle 
them at midnight. 

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that 20 
filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through the 
Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, rattling 
the door with a sound of wailing and lamentation before it 
passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, 
though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the 25 
family were glad again when they perceived that the latch 
was lifted by some traveller whose footsteps had been 
unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach, 
and wailed as he was entering and went moaning away from 
the door. 30 

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held 
daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the 

[H9l 



150 American Literary Readings 

Notch is a great artery through which the life-blood of 
internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine 

35 on one side and the Green Mountains and the shores of the 
St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-coach always drew 
up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer with no 
companion but his staff paused here to exchange a word, 
that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him 

4 ere he could pass through the cleft of the mountain or reach 
the first house in the valley. And here the teamster on 
his way to Portland market would put up for the night 
and, if a bachelor, might sit an hoiir beyond the usual bed- 
time, and steal a kiss from the mountain maid at parting. 

45 It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller 
pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely 
kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, 
therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the 
whole family rose up, grandmother, children and all, as if 

50 about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and 
whose fate was linked with theirs. 

The door was opened by a young man. His face at first 
wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency, of 
one who travels a wild and bleak road at nightfall and 

55 alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly 
warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward 
to meet them all, from the old woman who wiped a chair 
with her apron to the little child that held out its arms to 
him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing 

60 of innocent familiarity with the eldest daughter. 

"Ah ! this fire is the right thing, " cried he, "especially when 
there is such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite be- 
numbed, for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair 
of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face all the 

65 way from Bartlett." 

"Then you are going towards Vermont?" said the master 
of the house as he helped to take a light knapsack off the 
young man's shoulders. 



•The Ambitious Guest 151 

"Yes, to Biirlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. 
"I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night, but 70 
a pedestrian Hngers along such a road as this. It is no 
matter; for, when I saw this good fire and all your cheerful 
faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me and 
were waiting my arrival. So I shall sit down among you 
and make myself at home." 75 

The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to 
the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard 
without, rushing down the steep side of the mountain as 
with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in 
passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The so 
family held their breath, because they knew the sound, and 
their guest held his by instinct. 

"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we 
should forget him," said the landlord, recovering himself. 
"He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down, 85 
but we are old neighbors, and agree together pretty well 
upon the whole. Besides, we have a sure place of refuge 
hard by if he should be coming in good earnest." 

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his 
supper of bear's meat, and by his natural felicity of manner, 90 
to have placed himself on a footing of kindness with the 
whole family ; so that they talked as freely together as if he 
belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet 
gentle spirit, haughty and reserved among the rich and 
great, but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage 95 
door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fire- 
side. In the household of the Notch he found warmth and 
simplicity of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New Eng- 
land, and a poetry of native growth which they had gathered 
when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and 100 
chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and 
dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone; his whole 
life, indeed, had been a solitary path, for, with the lofty 
caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those 



152 American Literary Readings 

105 who might otherwise have been his companions. The 
family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that con- 
sciousness of unity among themselves and separation from 
the world at large which, in every domestic circle, should 
still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But 

no this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and 
educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple 
mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the 
same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not 
the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth? 

115 The secret of the young man's character was a high and 
abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an 
undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave. 
Yearning desire had been transformed to hope, and hope, 
long cherished, had become like certainty that, obscurely as 

120 he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway, 
though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when 
posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now 
the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, 
brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a 

125 gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none 
to recognize him. 

"As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and his 
eye flashing with enthusiasm — "as yet I have done nothing. 
Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would 

130 know so much of me as you — that a nameless youth came 
up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his 
heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch 
by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, 
'Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I can- 

135 not die till I have achieved my destiny. Then let Death 
come: I shall have built my monument." 

There was a continual flow of natural emotion gushing 
forth amid abstracted reverie which enabled the family to 
understand this young man's sentiments, though so foreign 

140 from their own. With quick sensibility of the ludicrous, he 



The Ambitious Guest " 153 

blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed. 

"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's 
hand and laughing himself. "You think my ambition 
as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the 
top of Mount Washington only that people might spy at 145 
me from the country roundabout. And truly that would be 
a noble pedestal for a man's statue." 

"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, 
blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though no- 
body thinks about us." 150 

"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there 
is something natiural in what the young man says; and if 
my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just 
the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head 
running on things that are pretty certain never to come to 155 
pass." 

"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man 
thinking what he will do when he is a widower? " 

"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful 
kindness. "When I think of your death, Esther, I think leo 
of mine too. But I was wishing we had a good farm in 
Bartlett or Bethlehem or Littleton or some other township 
round the White Mountains, but not where they could 
tumble on our heads.- I should want to stand well with my 
neighbors and be called squire and sent to General Court los 
for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much 
good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite 
an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long 
apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you 
all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me ko 
as well as a marble one, with just my name and age, and 
a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that 
I lived an honest man and died a Christian." 

"There, now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature 
to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of 175 
granite, or a glorious memory in the universal heart of man." 



154 American Literary Readings 

"We're in a strange way to-night," said the wife, with 
tears in her eyes. "They say it's a sign of something when 
folks' minds go a-wandering so. Hark to the children!" 

180 They listened accordingly. The younger children had 
been put to bed in another room, but with an open door 
between ; so that they could be heard talking busily among 
themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection 
from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild 

185 wishes and childish projects of what they would do when 
they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, 
instead of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to 
his mother. 

" I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he: "I want you 

190 and father and grandma 'm, and all of us, and the stranger 
too, to start right away and go and take a drink out of the 
basin of the Flume." 

Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving 
a warm bed and dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit 

195 the basin of the Flume — a brook, which tumbles over the 
precipice, deep within the Notch. 

The boy had hardly spoken, when a wagon rattled along 
the road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared 
to contain two or three men who were cheering their hearts 

200 with the rough chorus of a song which resounded in broken 

notes between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether 

to continue their journey or put up here for the night. 

"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name." 

But the good man doubted whether they had really called 

205 him, and was unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain 
by inviting people to patronize his house. He therefore 
did not hurry to the door, and the lash being soon applied, 
the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing and 
laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily 

210 from the heart of the mountain. 

"There, mother!" cried the boy, again; "they'd have 
given us a ride to the Flume." 



The Ambitious Guest 155 

Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a 
night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed 
over the daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire 215 
and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its 
way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then, starting 
and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if they 
had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked 
what she had been thinking of. 220 

"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only 
I felt lonesome just then." 

"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other 
people's hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the 
secrets of yours? For I know what to think when a young 225 
girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesome- 
ness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into 
words?" , 

"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could 
be put into words," replied the mountain nymph, laughing, 230 
but avoiding his eye. 

All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was 
springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in 
Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth ; for women 
worship such gentle dignity as his, and the proud, con- 235 
templative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by sim- 
plicity Hke hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was 
watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy 
yearnings, of a maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch 
took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful 240 
stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast 
who in old Indian times had their dwelling among these 
mountains and made their heights and recesses a sacred 
region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral 
were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw 245 
pine-branches on their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the 
flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and 
hiimble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly 



156 American Literary Readings 

and caressed them all. There were the little faces of the 

250 children peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's 
frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, 
the high-browed youth, the budding girl, 'and the good old 
grandam, still knitting in the wannest place. 

The aged woman looked up from her task, and with 

255 fingers ever busy was the next to speak. 

"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young 
ones. You've been wishing and planning and letting your 
heads run on one thing and another till you've set my mind 
a-wandering too. Now, what should an old woman wish for, 

260 when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her 
grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell 
you." 

"What is it, mother? " cried the husband and wife at once. 
Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew 

265 the circle closer round the fire, informed them that she had 
provided her grave-clothes some years before — a nice linen 
shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer 
sort than she had worn since her wedding-day. But this 
evening an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. 

270 It used to be said in her younger days that if anything were 
amiss with a corpse — if only the ruff were not smooth or the 
cap did not set right — the corpse in the coffin and beneath 
the clods, would strive to' put up its cold hands and arrange 
it. The bare thought made her nervous. 

275 "Don't talk so, grandmother!" said the girl, shuddering. 
"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnest- 
ness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly, "I want one 
of you, my children, when your mother is dressed and in the 
coffin, — I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my 

2 80 face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself 
and see whether all's right?" 

"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," 
murmured the stranger-youth. "I wonder how mariners 
feel when the ship is sinking and they, unknown and 



The Ambitious Guest 157 

undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean, 235 
that wide and nameless sepulchre?" 

For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so 
engrossed the minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in 
the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, 
deep, and terrible before the fated group were conscious of 290 
it. The house and all within it trembled; the foundations 
of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were 
the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one 
wild glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, with- 
out utterance or power to move. Then the same shriek 295 
biu-st simultaneously from all their lips: 

"The slide! The slide!" • 

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the 
unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed 
from their cottage and sought refuge in what they deemed 300 
a safer spot, where, in contemplation of such an emergency, 
a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted 
their security and fled right into the pathway of destruction. 
Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract of 
ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke 305 
into two branches, shivered not a window there, but over- 
whelmed the whole vicinity, blocked up the road, and 
annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere 
the thunder of that great slide had ceased to roar among 
the mountains the mortal agony had been endured, and the 310 
victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found. 

The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing 
from the cottage chimney up the mountain-side. Within, 
the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs 
in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth 315 
to view the devastation of the slide and would shortly return, 
to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left 
separate tokens by which those who had known the family 
were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their 
name? The story has been told far and wide, and will 320 



158 American Literary Readings 

forever be a legend of these mountains. Poets have sung 
their fate. 

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that 
a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awful 

325 night, and had shared the catastrophe of all its inmates; 
others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a 
conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth with his dream 
of earthly immortality! His name and person utterly 
unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery 

330 never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a 
doubt, — whose was the agony of that death-moment? 



THE GREAT CARBUNCLE ^ 

A MYSTERY OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS 

At nightfall once in the olden time, on the rugged side 
of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurers were 
refreshing themselves after a toilsome and fruitless quest 
for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as 

5 friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one 
youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing 
for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, how- 
ever, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a 
mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches and kindling 

10 a great fire of shattered pines that had drifted down the 
headlong current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of 
which they were to pass the night. There was but one 
of their number, perhaps, who had become so estranged 
from natural sympathies by the absorbing spell of the pur- 

15 suit as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human 
faces in the remote and solitary region whither they had 

iThe Indian tradition on which this somewhat extravagant tale is 
founded is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought 
up in prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the Rev- 
olution, remarks that even then the existence of the Great Carbuncle 
was not entirely discredited. 



The Great Carbuncle 159 

ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them 
and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their 
heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their 
shaggy mantle of forest-trees and either robe themselves in 20 
clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amo- 
noosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a 
solitary man had listened while the mountain stream talked 
with the wind. 

The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greet- 25 
ings and welcomed one another to the hut where each 
man was the host and all were the guests of the whole 
company. They spread their individual supplies of food on 
the flat surface of a rock and partook of a general repast; 
at the close of which a sentiment of good-fellowship was 30 
perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea 
that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make 
them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one 
young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, 
which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their 35 
wigwam. As they observed the various and contrasted 
figures that made up the assemblage, each man looking like 
a caricature of himself in the unsteady light that flickered 
over him, they came mutually to the conclusion that an 
odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on moun- 40 
tain or plain. 

The eldest of the group — a tall, lean, weatherbeaten man 
some sixty years of age — was clad in the skins of wild 
animals whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate, since the 
deer, the wolf, and the bear had long been his most intimate 45 
companions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such as 
the Indians told of, whom in their early youth the Great 
Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness and became the 
passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that 
region knew him as ' ' the Seeker, ' ' and by no other name. As so 
none could remember when he first took up the search, there 
went a fable in the valley of the Saco that for his inordinate 



i6o American Literary Readings 

lust after the Great Carbuncle he had been condemned to 
wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with 

55 the same feverish hopes at sunrise, the same despair at eve. 
Near this miserable Seeker sat a little elderly personage 
wearing a high-crowned hat shaped somewhat like a crucible. 
He was from beyond the sea — a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had 
wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually 

60 stooping over charcoal-furnaces and inhaling unwholesome 
fumes during his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was 
told of him — whether truly or not — that at the commence- 
ment of his studies he had drained his body of all its richest 
blood and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in 

65 an unsuccessful experiment, and had never been a well man 
since. Another of the adventiirers was Master Ichabod 
Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston, and 
an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies 
had a ridiculous story that Master Pigsnort was accustomed 

70 to spend a whole hoiir after prayer- time every morning and 
evening in wallowing naked among an immense quantity of 
pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of 
Massachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no 
name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly dis- 

75 tinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, 
and by a prodigious pair of spectacles which were supposed 
to deform and discolor the whole face of natiire to this 
gentleman's perception. The fifth adventiu-er likewise 
lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared 

80 to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but woefully pined 
away, which was no more than natural if, as some people 
affirmed, his ordinary diet was fog, morning mist, and a 
slice of the densest cloud within his reach, sauced with 
moonshine whenever he could get it. Certain it is that the 

85 poetry which flowed from him had a smack of all these 
dainties. The sixth of the party was a young man of 
haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wear- 
ing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire 



The Great Carbuncle i6i 

glittered on the rich embroidery of hie dress and gleamed 
mtensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was 90 
the lord De Vere, who when at home was said to spend 
much of his time in the burial-vault of his dead progenitors 
rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all the earthly 
pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust ; 
so that, besides his own share, he had the collected haughti- 95 
ness of his whole line of ancestry. 

Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and 
by his side a blooming little person in whom a delicate shade 
of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a 
young wife's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her 100 
husband's Matthew — two homely names, yet well enough 
adapted to the simple pair who seemed strangely out of place 
among the whimsical fraternity whose wits had been set 
agog by the Great Carbuncle. 

Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the 105 
same fire, sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent 
upon a single object that of whatever else they began to 
speak their closing words were sure to be illuminated with 
the Great Carbuncle. Several related the circumstances 
that brought them thither. One had listened to a traveller's no 
tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country, and 
had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding 
it as could only be quenched in its intensest lustre. Another, 
so long ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited these 
coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in 115 
all the intervening years till now that he took up the search. 
A third, being encamped on a hunting-expedition full forty 
miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at midnight and 
beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that 
the shadows of the trees fell backward from it. They spoke 120 
of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach 
the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto 
withheld success from all adventurers, though it might seem 
so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the 



i62 American Literary Readings 

125 moon and almost matched the sun. It was observable that 
each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in 
anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a 
scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the 
favored one. As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they 

130 recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch 
about the gem and bewildered those who sought it either by 
removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills or by calling 
up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But 
these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to 

135 believe that the search had been baffled by want of sagacity 

or perseverance in the adventurers, or such other causes as 

might naturally obstruct the passage to any given point 

among the intricacies of forest, valley, and mountain. 

In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious 

140 spectacles looked round upon the party, making each 
individual in turn the object of the sneer which invariably 
dwelt upon his countenance. 

"So, fellow-pilgrims," said he, "here we are, seven wise 
men and one fair damsel, who doubtless is as wise as any 

145 graybeard of the company. Here we are, I say, all bound on 
the same goodly enterprise. Methinks, now, it were not 
amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the 
Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch 
it. — What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, 

150 good sir, to enjoy the prize which you have been seeking 
the Lord knows how long among the Crystal Hills?" 

"How enjoy it!" exclaimed the aged Seeker, bitterly. 
" I hope for no enjoyment from it: that folly has passed long 
ago. I keep up the search for this accursed stone because 

155 the vain ambition of my youth has become a fate upon me 
in old age. The pursuit alone is my strength, the energy 
of my soul, the warmth of my blood, and the pith and 
marrow of my bones ! Were I to turn my back upon it, I 
should fall down dead on the hither side of the notch which 

160 is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not to have my 



The Great Carbuncle 163 

wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the 
Great Carbuncle. Having found it, I shall bear it to a certain 
cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie 
down and die and keep it buried with me forever." 

"O wretch regardless of the interests of science," cried les 
Doctor Cacaphodel, with philosophic indignation, "thou 
art not worthy to behold even from afar off the lustre of 
this most precious gem that ever was concocted in the 
laboratory of Nature. Mine is the sole purpose for which 
a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle. 170 
Immediately on obtaining it-^ — for I have a presentiment, 
good people, that the prize is reserved to crown my scientific 
reputation — I shall return to Europe and employ my 
remaining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion 
of the stone will I grind to impalpable powder, other parts 175 
shall be dissolved in acids or whatever solvents will act upon 
so admirable a composition, and the remainder I design to 
melt in the crucible or set on fire with the blowpipe. By 
these various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and 
finally bestow the result of my labors upon the world in a iso 
folio volume." 

"Excellent!" quoth the man with the spectacles. "Nor 
need you hesitate, learned sir, on account of the necessary 
destruction of the gem, since the perusal of yoiir folio may 
teach every mother's son of us to concoct a Great Carbuncle iss 
of his own." 

"But verily," said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, "for mine 
own part, I object to the making of these counterfeits, as 
being calculated to reduce the marketable value of the true 
gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an interest in keeping up i9o 
the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving 
my warehouse in the care of my clerks, and putting my credit 
to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril 
of death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages, 
and all this without daring to ask the prayers of the congre- 193 
gatioti, because the quest for the Great Carbuncle is deemed 



164 American Literary Readings 

little better than a traffic with the evil one. Now, think 
ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, 
body, reputation, and estate without a reasonable chance of 

200 profit?" 

"Not I, pious Master Pigsnort," said the man with the 

spectacles. "I never laid such a great folly to thy charge." 

"Truly, I hope not," said the merchant. "Now, as 

touching this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have 

205 never had a glimpse of it, but, be it only the hundredth part 
so bright as people tell, it will surely outvalue the Great 
Mogul's best diamond, which, he holds at an incalculable 
sum; wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle 
on shipboard and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, 

210 Italy, or into heathendom if Providence should send me 
thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to the best bidder 
among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it 
among his crown-jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let 
him expound it." 

215 "That have I, thou sordid man!" exclaimed the poet. 
"Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold, that thou 
wouldst transmute all this ethereal lustre into such dross 
as thou wallowest in already? For myself, hiding the jewel 
under my cloak, I shall hie me back to my attic-chamber, 

220 in one of the darksome alleys of London. There night and 
day will I gaze upon it. My soul shall drink its radiance; 
it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers and 
gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite. Thus 
long ages after I am gone the splendor of the Great Car- 

225 buncle will blaze around my name." 

"Well said. Master Poet!" cried he of the spectacles. 

"Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou? Why, it will gleam 

through the holes and make thee look like a jack-o'-lantern ! " 

"To think," ejaculated the lord DeVere, rather to him- 

230 self than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly 
unworthy of his intercourse — "to think that a fellow in a 
tattered cloak should talk of conveying the Great Carbuncle 



The Great Carbuncle 165 

to a garret in Grub Street! Have not I resolved within 
myself that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for 
the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame 235 
for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the 
suits of armor, the banners and escutcheons, that hang 
around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes. 
Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain 
but that I might win it and make it a symbol of the glories 240 
of oiir lofty line? And never on the diadem of the White 
Mountains did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so 
honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres!" 

" It is a noble thought," said the Cynic, with an obsequious 
sneer. "Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would 245 
make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories 
of Your Lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral 
vault than in the castle-hall." * 

"Nay, forsooth," observed Matthew, the young rustic, 
who sat hand in hand with his bride, "the gentleman has 250 
bethought himself of a profitable use for this bright stone. 
Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like purpose." 

"How, fellow?" exclaimed His Lordship, in surprise. 
"What castle-hall hast thou to hang it in?" 

"No castle," replied Matthew, "but as neat a cottage 255 
as any within sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, 
friends, that Hannah and I, being wedded the last week, 
have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle because 
we shall need its light in the long winter evenings and it 
will be such a pretty thing to show the neighbors when they 260 
visit us! It will shine through the house, so that we may 
pick up a pin in any corner, and will set all the windows 
aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine-knots in the 
chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the 
night, to be able to see one another's faces!" 265 

There was a general smile among the adventurers at the 
simplicity of the young couple's project in regard to this 
wondrous and invaluable stone, with which the greatest 



1 66 American Literary Readings 

monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn his palace. 

270 Especially the man with spectacles, who had sneered at all 
the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an 
expression of ill-natured mirth that Matthew asked him, 
rather peevishly, what he himself meant to do with the 
Great Carbuncle. 

275 "The Great Carbuncle!" answered the Cynic, with inef- 
fable scorn. "Why, you blockhead, there is no such thing 
in rerum natura. I have come three thousand miles, and am 
resolved to set my foot on every peak of these mountains 
and poke my head into every chasm for the sole purpose of 

280 demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an 

ass than thyself that the Great Carbuncle is all a humbug. " 

Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most 

of the adventurers to the Crystal Hills, but none so vain, so 

foolish, and so impious too, as that of the scoffer with the 

285 prodigious spectacles. He was one of those wretched and 
evil men whose yearnings are downward to the darkness 
instead of heavenward, and who, could they but extinguish 
the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the 
midnight gloom their chiefest glory. 

290 As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were startled by 
a gleam of red splendor, that showed the huge shapes of the 
surrounding mountains and the rock-bestrewn bed of the 
turbulent river, with an illumination unlike that of their fire, 
on the trunks and black boughs of the forest-trees. They 

295 hstened for the roll of thunder, but heard nothing, and 
were glad that the tempest came not near them. The stars -^ 
those dial-points of heaven^ now warned the adventurers to 
close their eyes on the blazing logs and open them in dreams 
to the glow of the Great Carbuncle. 

300 The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the 
farthest comer of the wigwam, and were separated from the 
rest of the party by a curtain of curiously woven twigs such 
as might have hung in deep festoons around the bridal- 
bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece 



The Great Carbuncle 167 

of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She and her 305 
husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke 
from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed 
light of one another's eyes. They awoke at the same 
instant and with one happy smile beaming over their two 
faces, which grew brighter with their consciousness of the 310 
reality of life and love. But no sooner did she recollect 
where they were than the bride peeped through the inter- 
stices of the leafy curtain and saw that the outer room of 
the hut was deserted. 

"Up, dear Matthew!" cried she, in haste. "The strange 315 
folk are all gone. Up this very minute, or we shall lose the 
Great Carbuncle!" 

In truth, so little did these poor young people deserve the 
mighty prize which had lured them thither that they had 
slept peacefully all night and till the summits of the hills 320 
were glittering with sunshine, while the other adventurers* 
had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness or dreamed 
of climbing precipices, and set off to realize their dreams 
with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah 
after their calm rest were as light as two young deer, and 325 
merely stopped to say their prayers and wash themselves in 
a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, and then to taste a morsel 
of food ere they turned their faces to the mountain-side. 
It was a sweet emblem of conjugal affection as they toiled up 
the difficult ascent, gathering strength from the mutual aid 330 
which they afforded. 

After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost 
shoe, and the entanglement of Hannah's hair in a bough, 
they reached the upper verge of the forest and were now 
to pursue a more adventurous course. The innumerable 33s 
trunks and heavy foliage of the trees had hitherto shut in 
their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region 
of wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine 
that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at 
the obscure wilderness which they had traversed, and longed 340 



1 68 American Literary Readings 

to be buried again in its depths rather than trust themselves 
to so vast and visible a solitude. 

"Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his arm round 
Hannah's waist both to protect her and to comfort his heart 

345 by drawing her close to it. 

But the little bride, simple as she.was, had a woman's love 
of jewels, and could not forego the hope of possessing the 
very brightest in the world, in spite of the perils with which 
it must be won. 

350 "Let us climb a little higher," whispered she, yet tremu- 
lously, as she turned her face upward to the lonely sky. 

" Come, then," said Matthew, mustering his manly courage 
and drawing her along with him ; for she became timid again 
the moment that he grew bold. 

355 And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great 
Carbuncle, now treading upon the tops and thickly inter- 
'woven branches of dwarf pines which by the growth of 
centuries, though mossy with age, had barely reached three 
feet in altitude. Next they came to masses and fragments 

360 of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared 
by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm 
of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew; there was no 
life but what was concentred in their two hearts; they 
had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no longer 

365 to keep them company. She lingered beneath them within 
the verge of the forest- trees, and sent a farewell glance after 
her children as they strayed where her own green footprints 
had never been. But soon they were to be hidden from her 
eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather below, 

370 casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape and 
sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak 
had siimmoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally the 
vapors welded themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting 
the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers 

375 might have trodden, but where they would vainly have 
sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost. 



The Great Carbuncle 169 

And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again — 
more intensely, alas! than beneath a clouded sky they had 
ever desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief 
to their desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up 3 so 
the mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and thus anni- 
hilated — at least, for them — the whole region of visible space. 
But they drew closer together with a fond and melancholy 
gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them 
from each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would have 385 
been resolute to climb as far and as high between earth and 
heaven as they could find foothold if Hannah's strength had 
not begun to fail, and with that her courage also. Her breath 
grew short. She refused to burden her husband with her 
weight, but often tottered against his side, and recovered 390 
herself each time by a feebler effort. At last, she sank down 
on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity. 

"We are lost, dear Matthew," said she, mournfully; "we 
shall never find our way to the earth again. And oh how 
happy we might have been in our cottage!" 395 

"Dear heart, we will yet be happy there," answered 
Matthew. "Look! In this direction, the sunshine pene- 
trates the dismal mist; by its aid I can direct our course 
to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love, and 
dream no more of the Great Carbuncle." 400 

"The sun cannot be yonder," said Hannah, with despond- 
ence. "By this time it must be noon; if there could ever 
be any sunshine here, it would come from above our heads." 

"But look!" repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered 
tone. "It is brightening every moment. If not sunshine, 405 
what can it be?" 

Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance 
was breaking through the mist and changing its dim hue 
to a dusky red, which continually grew more vivid, as if 
brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now, 410 
also, the cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while, 
as it heavily withdrew, one object after another started out 



170 American Literary Readings 

of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely the 
effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old 

415 chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process 
went on they saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, 
and found themselves on the very border of a mountain 
lake, deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful, spreading from 
brim to brim of a basin that had been scooped out of the solid 

4 20 rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The 
pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed their 
eyes, with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid 
splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impending 
over the enchanted lake. 

425 For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and 
found the long-sought shrine of the Great Carbuncle. 

They threw their arms around each other and trembled 
at their own success, for as the legends of this wondrous gem 
rushed thick upon their memory they felt themselves marked 

430 out by fate, and the consciousness was fearful. Often 
from childhood upward they had seen it shining like a 
distant star, and now that star was throwing its intensest 
lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one 
another's eyes in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their 

435 cheeks, while it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and 
sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its 
power. But with their next glance they. beheld an object 
that drew their attention even from the mighty stone. At 
the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, 

440 appeared the figure of a man with his arms extended in the 
act of climbing and his face turned upward as if to drink the 
full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if 
changed to marble. 

"It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convulsively 

445 grasping her husband's arm. "Matthew, he is dead." 
"The joy of success has killed him," replied Matthew, 
trembling violently. "Or perhaps the very light of the 
Great Carbuncle was death." 



The Great Carbuncle 171 

"The Great Carbuncle!" cried a peevish voice behind 
them. "The Great Humbug! If you have found it, prithee 450 
point it out to me." 

They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic with 
his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring 
now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at the distant masses 
of vapor, now right at the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seem- 455 
ingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds 
were condensed about his person. Though its radiance 
actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet 
as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not 
be convinced that there was the least glimmer there. 46o 

"Where is your Great Humbug?" he repeated. "I chal- 
lenge you to make me see it." 

"There!" said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blind- 
ness, and turning the Cynic round toward the illuminated 
cliff. "Take off those abominable spectacles, and you 465 
cannot help seeing it." 

Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the 
Cynic's sight, in at least as great a degree as the smoked 
glasses through which people gaze at an eclipse. With 
resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from his nose, 470 
and fixed a bold stare full upon the ruddy blaze of the Great 
Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it when, with 
a deep, shuddering groan, he dropped his head and pressed 
both hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there 
was in very truth no light of the Great Carbuncle, nor any 475 
other light on earth, nor light of heaven itself, for the poor 
Cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects through a 
medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, 
a single flash of so glorious a phenomenon, striking upon his 
naked vision, had blinded him for ever. 480 

'Matthew," said Hannah, clinging to him, "let us go 
hence." 

Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, sup- 
ported her in his arms while he threw some of the thrillingly 



172 American Literary Readings 

485 cold water of the enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. 
It revived her, but could not renovate her courage. 

"Yes, dearest," cried Matthew, pressing her tremulous 
form to his breast; "we will go hence and ~ return to our 
humble cottage. The blessed sunshine and the quiet moon- 

490 light shall come through our window. We will kindle the 
cheerful glow of our hearth at eventide and be happy in its 
light. But never again will we desire more light than all the 
world may share with us." 

"No," said his bride, "for how could we live by day or 

495 sleep by night in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle?" 

Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a 

draught from the lake, which presented them its waters 

uncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then, lending their 

guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a word, and 

500 even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they 
began to descend the mountain. Yet as they left the 
shore, till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a 
farewell glance toward the cliff and beheld the vapors 
gathering in dense volumes, through which the gem burned 

505 duskily. 

As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, 
the legend goes on to tell that the worshipful Master Ichabod 
Pigsnort soon gave up the quest as a desperate speculation, 
and wisely resolved to betake himself again to his warehouse, 

510 near the town-dock, in Boston. But as he passed through 
the Notch of the mountains a war-party of Indians captured 
our unlucky merchant and carried him to Montreal, there 
holding him in bondage till by the payment of a heavy 
ransom he had woefully subtracted from his hoard of pine- 

515 tree shillings. By his long absence, moreover, his affairs had 
become so disordered that for the rest of his life, instead of 
wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence-worth of copper. 
Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory 
with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to 

620 powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible and burned 



The Great Carbuncle 173 

with the blowpipe, and published the result of his experi- 
ments in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And for all 
these purposes the gem itself could not] have answered better 
than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, 
made prize of a great piece of ice which he found in a sunless 525 
chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded in 
all points with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics 
say that, if his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it 
retained all the coldness of the ice. The lord De Vere went 
back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with 530 
a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled in due course of time 
another cofiEin in the ancestral vault. As the funeral torches 
gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the 
Great Carbuncle to show the vanity of earthly pomp. 

The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wandered 535 
about the world a miserable object, and was punished with 
an agonizing desire of light for the wilful blindness of his 
former life. The whole night long he would lift his splendor- 
blasted orbs to the moon and stars; he turned his face 
eastward at sunrise as duly as a Persian idolater; he made 540 
a pilgrimage to Rome to witness the magnificent illumina- 
tion of St. Peter's Church, and finally perished in the Great 
Fire of London, into the midst of which he had thrust himself 
with the desperate idea of catching one feeble ray from the 
blaze that was kindling earth and heaven. 545 

Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful years and 
were fond of telling the legend of the Great Carbuncle. The 
tale, however, towards the close of their lengthened lives, 
did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded 
to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. 550 
For it is affirmed that from the hour when two mortals had 
shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which 
would have dimmed all earthly things its splendor waned. 
When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an 
opaque stone with particles of mica glittering on its surface. 555 
There is also a tradition that as the youthful pair departed 



174 American Literary Readings 

the gem was loosened from the forehead of the cliff and fell 
into the enchanted lake, and that at noontide the Seeker's 
form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam. 

560 Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blazing 
as of old, and say that they have caught its radiance, like 
a flash of summer lightning, far down the valley of the 
Saco. And be it owned that many a mile from the Crystal 
Hills I saw a wondrous light around their summits, and was 

565 lured by the faith of poesy to be the latest pilgrim of the 
Great Carbuncle. 



THE WEDDING-KNELL 

There is a certain church in the city of New York which 
I have always regarded with peculiar interest on account 
of a marriage there solemnized under very singular circum- 
stances in my grandmother's girlhood. That venerable 

5 lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene, and ever after 
made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now 
standing on the same site be the identical one to which she 
referred I am not antiquarian enough to know, nor would 
it be worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable 

10 error by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over 
the door. It is a stately church surrounded by an enclosure 
of the loveliest green, within which appear urns, pillars, 
obelisks, and other forms of monumental marble, the 
tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials 

15 of historic dust. With such a place, though the tumult of 
the city rolls beneath its tower, one would be willing to 
connect some legendary interest. 

The marriage might be considered as the result of an 
early engagement, though there had been two intermediate 

20 weddings on the lady's part and forty years of celibacy on 
that of the gentleman. At sixty-five Mr. Ellen wood was a 
shy but not quite a secluded man; selfish, like all men who 



The Wedding-Knell 175 

brood over their own hearts, yet manifesting on rare occa- 
sions a vein of generous sentiment; a scholar throughout 
Hfe, though always an indolent one, because his studies had 25 
no definite object either of public advantage or personal 
ambition; a gentleman, high-bred and fastidiously delicate, . 
yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation in his 
behalf of the common rules of society. In truth, there 
were so many anomalies in his character, and, though shrink- 30 
ing with diseased sensibility from public notice, it had been 
his fatality so often to become the topic of the day by some 
wild eccentricity of conduct, that people searched his lineage 
for a hereditary taint of insanity. But there was no need 
of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked 35 
the support of an engrossing purpose, and in feelings that 
preyed upon- themselves for want of other food. If he were 
mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless 
and abortive life. 

The widow was as complete a contrast to her third bride- 40 
groom in everything but age as can well be conceived. 
Compelled to relinquish her first engagement, she had been 
united to a man of twice her own years, to whom she became 
an exemplary wife, and by whose death she was left in 
possession of a splendid fortune. A Southern gentleman 45 
considerably younger than herself succeeded to her hand 
and carried her to Charleston, where after many uncom- 
fortable years she found herself again a widow. It would 
have been singular if any uncommon delicacy of feeling had 
survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's; it could not 50 
but be crushed and killed by her early, disappointment, the 
cold duty of her first marriage, the dislocation of the heart's 
principles consequent on a second union, and the unkindness 
of her Southern husband, which had inevitably driven her 
to connect the idea of his death with that of her comfort. 55 
To be brief, she was that wisest but unloveliest variety of 
woman, a philosopher, bearing troubles of the heart with 
equanimity, dispensing with all that should have been her 



176 American Literary Readings 

happiness and making the best of what remained. Sage in 

60 most matters, the widow was perhaps the more amiable for 
the one frailty that made her ridiculous. Being childless, 
she could not remain beautiful by proxy in the person of 

. a daughter; she therefore refused to grow old and ugly on 
any consideration; she struggled with Time, and held fast 

05 her roses in spite of him, till the venerable thief appeared 
to have relinquished the spoil as not worth the trouble of 
acquiring it. 

The approaching marriage of this woman of the world 
with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was 

70 announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her native 
city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to 
concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no 
inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considera- 
tions of expediency which she would be far more likely to 

75 appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood, and there was just the 
specious phantom of sentiment and romance in this late 
union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of 
a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents 
of life. All the wonder was how the gentleman, with his 

80 lack of worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of 
ridicule, could have been induced to take a measure at once 
so prudent and so laughable. But while people talked the 
wedding-day arrived. The ceremony was to be solemnized 
according to the Episcopalian forms and in open church, 

85 with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators, 
who occupied the front seats of the galleries, and the pews 
near the altar and along the broad aisle. It had been 
arranged, or possibly it was the custom of the day, that the 
parties should proceed separately to church. By some 

90 accident the bridegroom was a little less punctual than the 
widow and her bridal attendants, with whose arrival, after 
this tedious but necessary preface, the action of our tale 
may be said to commence. 

The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were 



The Wedding-Knell ij-j 

heard, and the gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal- 95 
party came through the church door with the sudden and 
gladsome effect of a burst of sunshine. The whole group, 
except the principal figure, was made up of youth and gayety. 
As they streamed up the broad aisle, while the pews and 
pillars seemed to brighten on either side, their steps were 100 
as buoyant as if they mistook the church for a ball-room 
and were ready to dance hand in hand to the altar. So 
brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of a singular 
phenomenon that had marked its entrance. At the moment 
when the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swung 105 
heavily in the tower abo\^e her and sent forth its deepest 
knell. The vibrations died away, and returned with pro- 
longed solemnity as she entered the body of the church. 

"Good heavens! What an omen!" whispered a young 
lady to her lover. no 

"On my honor," replied the gentleman, "I believe the 
bell has the good taste to toll of its own accord. What 
has she to do with weddings? If you, dearest Julia, were 
approaching the altar, the bell would ring out its merriest 
peal. It has only a funeral-knell for her." us 

The bride and most of her company had been too much 
occupied with the bustle of entrance to hear the first boding 
stroke of the bell — or, at least, to reflect on the singularity 
of such a welcome to the altar. They therefore continued 
to advance with undiminished gayety. The gorgeous dresses 120 
of the time — the crimson velvet coats, the gold-laced hats, 
the hoop-petticoats, the silk, satin, brocade, and embroidery, 
the buckles, canes, and swords, all displayed to the best 
advantage on persons suited to such finery — made the group 
appear more like a bright-colored picture than anything real. 125 
But by what perversity of taste had the artist represented 
his principal figure as so wrinkled and decayed, while yet 
he had decked her out in the brightest splendor of attire, 
as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age 
and become a moral to the beautiful around her? On they uo 

7 



178 American Literary Readings 

went, however, and had gHttered along about a third of the 
aisle, when another stroke of the bell seemed to fill the church 
with a visible gloom, diirjning and obscuring the bright 
pageant till it shone forth again as from a mist. 

135 This time the party wavered, stopped and huddled closer 
together, while a slight scream was heard from some of the 
ladies and a confused whispering among the gentlemen. 
Thus tossing to and fro, they might have been fancifully 
compared to a splendid bunch of flowers suddenly shaken 

140 by a puff of wind which threatened to scatter the leaves of 
an old brown, withered rose on the same stalk with two dewy 
buds, such being the emblem of the widow between her 
fair young btidemaids. But her heroism was admirable. 
She had started with an irrepressible shudder, as if the stroke 

145 of the bell had fallen directly on her heart; then, recovering 
herself, while her attendants were yet in dismay, she took 
the lead and paced calmly up the aisle. The bell continued 
to swing, strike, and vibrate with the same doleful regularity 
as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb. 

150 " My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," 
said the widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. 
"But so many weddings have been ushered in with the 
merriest peal of the bells, and yet turned out unhappily, that 
I shall hope for better fortune under such different auspices." 

155 "Madam," answered the rector, in great perplexity, "this 
strange occurrence brings to my mind a marriage-sermon of 
the famous Bishop Taylor wherein he mingles so many 
thoughts of mortality and future woe that, to speak some- 
what after his own rich style, he seems to hang the bridal- 

160 chamber in black and cut the wedding-garment out of a 
coffin-pall. And it has been the custom of divers nations 
to infuse something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies, 
so to keep death in mind while contracting that engagement 
which is life's diiefest business. Thus we may draw a sad 

165 but profitable moral from this funeral-knell." 

But, though the clergyman might have given his moral even 



The Wedding-Knell 179 

a keener point, he did not fail to despatch an attendant to 
inquire into the mystery and stop those sounds so dismally 
appropriate to such a marriage. A brief space elapsed, during 
which the silence was broken only by whispers and a few uo 
suppressed titterings among the wedding-party and the 
spectators, who after the first shock were disposed to draw 
an ill-natured merriment from the affair. The young have 
less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth. 
The widow's glance was observed to wander for an instant 175 
toward a window. of the church, as if searching for the time- 
worn marble that she had dedicated to her first husband; 
then her eyelids dropped over their faded orbs and her 
thoughts w^ere drawn irresistibly to another grave. Two 
buried m.en with a voice at her ear and a cry afar off were iso 
calling her to lie down beside them. Perhaps, with momen- 
tary truth of feeling, she thought how much happier had been 
her fate if, after years of bliss, the bell W'Cre now tolling for 
her funeral and she were followed to the grave by the old 
affection of her earliest lover, long her husband. But why iss 
had she returned to him when their cold hearts shrank from 
each other's embrace? 

Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully that the sunshine 
seemed to fade in the air. A whisper, communicated from 
those who stood nearest the windows, now spread through loo 
the church: a hearse with a train of several coaches was 
creeping along the street, conveying some dead man to the 
churchyard, while the bride awaited a living one at the altar. 
Immediately after, the footsteps of the bridegroom and his 
friends were heard at the door. The widow looked down 195 
the aisle and clenched the arm of one of her bridemaids in 
her bony hand with such unconscious violence that the fair 
girl trembled. 

"You frighten me, my dear madam," cried she. "For 
heaven's sake, what is the matter?" 200 

" Nothing, my dear — nothing," said the widow; then, whis- 
pering close to her ear, "There is a foolish fancy that I cannot 



i8o American Literary Readings 

get rid of. I am expecting my bridegroom to come into the 
church with my first two husbands for groomsmen!" 

205 "Look! look!" screamed the bridemaid. "What is here? 
The funeral!" 

As she spoke a dark procession paced into the church. 
First came an old man and woman, like chief mourners at 
a funeral, attired from head to foot in the deepest black, 

210 all but their pale features and hoary hair, he leaning on a 
staff and supporting her decrepit form with his nerveless arm. 
Behind appeared another and another pair, as aged, as black 
and mournful as the first. As they drew near the widow 
recognized in every face some trait of former friends long 

215 forgotten, but now returning as if from their old graves 
to warn her to prepare a shroud, or, with purpose almost as 
unwelcome, to exhibit their wrinkles and infirmity and claim 
her as their companion by the tokens of her own decay. 
Many a merry night had she danced with them in youth, 

220 and now in joyless age she felt that some withered partner 
should request her hand and all unite in a dance of death 
to the music of the funeral-bell. 

While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle it 
was observed that from pew to pew the spectators shuddered 

225 with irrepressible awe as some object hitherto concealed by 
the intervening figures came full in sight. Many tiirned 
away their faces; others kept a fixed and rigid stare, and a 
young girl giggled hysterically and fainted with the laughter 
on her lips. When the spectral procession approached 

230 the altar, each couple separated and slowly diverged, till in 
the centre appeared a form that had been worthily ushered 
in with all this gloomy pomp, the death-knell and the funeral. 
It was the bridegroom in his shroud. 

No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a 

235 death-like aspect. The eyes, indeed, had the wild gleam of 
a sepulchral lamp; all else was fixed in the stem calmness 
which old men wear in the coffin. The corpse stood motion- 
less, but addressed the widow in accents that seemed to melt 



The Wedding-Knell i8i 

into the clang of the bell, which fell heavily on the air while 
he spoke. 240 

"Come, my bride!" said those pale lips. "The hearse is 
ready; the sexton stands waiting for us at the door of the 
tomb. Let us be married, and then to our coffins!" 

How shall the widow's horror be represented? It gave 
her the ghastliness of a dead man's bride. Her youthful 245 
friends stood apart, shuddering at the mourners, the shrouded 
bridegroom and herself; the whole scene expressed by the 
strongest imagery the vain struggle of the gilded vanities 
of this world when opposed to age, infirmity, sorrow, and 
death. 250 

The awestruck silence was first broken by the clergyman. 

"Mr. Ellenwood," said he, soothingly, yet with somewhat 
of authority, "you are not well. Your mind has been agi- 
tated by the unusual circimistances in which you are placed. 
The ceremony must be deferred. As an old friend, let me 255 
entreat you to return home." 

"Home — yes; but not without my bride," answered he, 
in the same hollow accents. "You deem this mockery — 
perhaps madness. Had I bedizened iny aged and broken 
frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my 260 
withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have 
been mockery or madness; but now let young and old 
declare which of us has come hither without a wedding- 
garment — the bridegroom or the bride." 

He stepped forward at a ghostly pace and stood beside 205 
the widow, contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud 
with the glare and glitter in which she had arrayed herself 
for this unhappy scene. None that beheld them could deny 
the terrible strength of the moral which his disordered 
intellect had contrived to draw. 270 

"Cruel! cruel!" groaned the heartstricken bride. 

"Cruel?" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike compos- 
ure in a wild bitterness, "Heaven judge which of us has 
been cruel to the other! In youth you deprived me of my 



i82 American Literary Readings 

275 happiness, my hopes, my aims; you took away all the 
substance of my life and made it a dream without reality 
enough even to grieve at — with only a pervading glooin, 
through which I walked wearily and cared not whither. 
But after forty years, when I have built my tomb and would 

280 not give up the thought of resting there — no, not for such a 
life as we once pictured — you call me to the altar. At your 
summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your 
youth, your beauty, your wannth of heart and all that could 
be termed your life. What is there for me but your decay 

285 and death? And therefore I have bidden these funeral- 
friends, and bespoken the sexton's deepest knell, and am 
come in my shroud to wed you as with a burial-service, 
that we may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre and 
enter it together." 

29 It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of 
strong emotion in a heart unused to it, that now wrought 
upon the bride. The stern lesson of the day had done its 
work ; her worldliness was gone. She seized the bridegroom's 
hand. 

295 "Yes!" cried she; "let us wed even at the door of the 
sepulchre. My life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but 
at its close there is one true feeling. It has made me what 
I was in youth : it makes me worthy of you. Time is no more 
for both of us. Let us wed for eternity." 

300 With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into 
her eyes, while a tear was gathering in his own. How strange 
that gush of human feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse ! 
He wiped away the tear, even with his shroud. 

"Beloved of my youth," said he, " I have been wild. The 

305 despair of my whole lifetime had returned at once and mad- 
dened me. Forgive and be forgiven. Yes; it is evening 
with us now, and we have realized none of our morning 
dreams of happiness. But let us join our hands before the 
altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated 

310 through life, yet who meet again as they are leaving it 



The Wedding- Knell 183 

and find their earthly affection changed into something holy 
as religion. And what is time to the married of eternity?" 
Amid the tears' of many and a swell of exalted sentiment 
in those who felt aright was solemnized the union of two 
immortal souls. The train of withered mourners, the hoary 315 
bridegroom in his shroud, the pale features of the aged bride 
and the death-bell tolling through the whole till its deep 
voice overpowered the marriage-words, — all marked the 
funeral of earthly hopes. But as the ceremony proceeded, 
the organ, as if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive 320 
scene, poured forth an anthem, first mingling with the dismal 
knell, then rising to a loftier strain, till the soul looked down 
upon its woe. And when the awful rite was finished and 
with cold hand in cold hand the married of eternity with- 
drew, the organ's peal of solemn triumph drowned the 325 
wedding-knell. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 

Whenever American poets are mentioned, the name that 
flashes at once into the mind at the head of the hst is that 
of Henry Wadsworth LongfelloW. Like Washington, but 
in a Hterary rather than in a pohtical sense, he is "first in 
the hearts of his countrymen." He has produced a larger 
body of poetry than has any other of our poets, his poems 
are more famiHarly read and quoted than are the works of 
any of our other writers, and he has been more widely trans- 
lated and more prominently recognized abroad, particularly 
in England, as the most representative, if not the most 
original and powerful, of our poets. 

Longfellow is the only one of the more distinguished 
New England men of letters born outside the present borders 
of Massachusetts. Portland, Maine, his birthplace, was 
really a part of Massachusetts at the time of his birth, 
February 27, 1807. He studied at Bowdoin College, and 
was graduated in 1825 along with Nathaniel Hawthorne 
and several other men who rose to prominence. Long- 
fellow's father was a lawyer, and he had proposed to 
give his son a legal education after he finished college; but 
in his senior year the young man professed in a letter 
to his father his aspiration for future eminence in litera- 
ture. "Whether Nature has given me any capacity for 
knowledge or not, she has at any rate given me a strong 
predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident 
in believing that if I can ever rise in the world, it must be 
by the exercise of my talent in the wide field of Jiterature. 
With such a belief, I must say that I am unwilling to engage 
in the stud}^ of law." 

He had asked the privilege of spending a year after 
graduation at Bowdoin in studying what was then called 
belles-lettres, or polite literature, at Harvard College. His 
father consented, but the trustees of Bowdoin College offered 
the young graduate a professorship in modern languages on 
the condition that he should go abroad for study at his own 
expense. His father furnished the money, and the pros- 
pective professor, then but nineteen , sailed for Europe. He 

[184] 




From a painting by Healy in the possession 
of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 185 

spent three years studying the languages and literatures of 
France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. This contact with 
European literature and culture was the best possible 
preparation for his later work as a poet. 

He returned to Bowdoin and began his work as a teacher 
in 1829. He had not only to do all the work of directing 
his classes in the various foreign languages, but also to 
prepare elementary textbooks for the guidance of his pupils. 
He did his work well, and in 1834 he was called to succeed 
George Ticknor as Smith professor of French and Spanish 
at Harvard College. In April, 1835, he sailed again to 
Europe for another year and a half of study. In 183 1 he 
had married Miss Mary Potter of Portland, and he took his 
wife along with him. Her health was delicate, and she died 
in Rotterdam, Holland, some months later. She is fittingly 
commemorated in the poem "Footsteps of Angels." 

Partly to bury himself from his grief and partly in prep- 
aration for his future work at Harvard, the poet plunged 
into the study of German language and literature. He made 
good progress and by the summer of 1836 he was ready to 
return to America to enter upon his professorship. When 
he went to Cambridge, he was directed to the home of 
Mrs. Craigie, who owned the famous old Craigie House 
where General Washington once had his headquarters 
during the Revolutionary War. Mrs. Craigie at first refused 
to accept him, taking him for a college student, but when 
she found out that he was the new professor and the author 
of Outre Mer, she gave him rooms in her home. When 
Longfellow married Miss Frances Appleton in 1843, his 
father-in-law made them a present of Craigie House, which 
has since become a sort of literary shrine for pilgrims from 
all over the world. There Longfellow lived the remainder 
of his life. After eighteen years of service he resigned his 
professorship to James Russell Lowell, but he continued to 
live in Cambridge and take a lively interest in the affairs 
of the university. 

Longfellow's prose works are Outre Mer ("Beyond the 
Sea") (1833), a sort of irnitation of Irving's Sketch Book with 
scenes drawn from France, Spain, and Italy; Hyperion 
(1839), a sentimentalized romance interspersed with German 
legends, translation, and bits of description; and Kavanagh 
(1849), a- realistic novel of rural New England life. These 
have been overshadowed by the greater popularity of his 



1 86 American Literary Readings 

poetical works, but the last two in particular are well worth 
a perusal, especially while one is young. The style is per- 
haps too highly colored and the stories too sentimental for 
the more robust modem taste, but these works give Long- 
fellow a right to a place in the history of American romantic 
prose. 

The history of Longfellow's poetical production begins 
at least in his thirteenth year when the Portland Gazette 
published his "Battle of Lovell's Pond." He continued 
to write poetry from this time until his death in 1882. His 
first volume of verse, Voices of the Night, was published 
in 1839; in 1841 Ballads and Other Poems appeared; and in 
1846, The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems. From the 
first of these volumes we have selected for publication here 
"A Psalm of Life" and "Hymn to the Night"; from the 
second "The Wreck of the Hesperus," "Maidenhood," and 
"Excelsior"; from the third "The Arrow and the Song." 
Though forced to omit many a favorite, we think that 
these, along with Evangeline and the sonnet called "Divina 
Commedia," are fairly representative of Longfellow's lyric 
and epic powers. Other single volumes of poetry appeared 
from time to time, up to his death, but these have now all 
been included in his collected works and need not be men- 
tioned separately here. 

The enthusiastic and widespread reception accorded these 
early volumes led the poet to essay greater themes. His 
mind was steeped in European literature and legend, but 
more and more he was turning to American life, legend, and 
history for his subjects. In 1847 appeared what is now 
recognized as the greatest of all his works, Evangeline, the 
epic-idyl of the Anglo-French conflict for supremacy on 
the North American continent. Other great narrative 
works followed, such as Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of 
Miles Standish (1858), and Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863). 
Some have pronounced Hiawatha the most original con- 
tribution to our literature, and others have hailed it as the 
only truly American epic. But in spite of its originality, 
its aboriginal American coloring, and its appealing beauty, 
we are inclined to rank it below Evangeline in artistic power 
and fundamental human appeal. The Courtship of Miles 
Standish is deservedly popular, though Longfellow does not 
seem to handle the hexameter in this happier-toned poem 
so well as he did in the more melancholy and solemn-toned 



Henry Wadsivorth Longfellow 187 

Evangeline. It is interesting to know that Longfellow traced 
his ancestry on his mother's side back to John and 
Priscilla Alden, the hero and heroine of the romance. Tales 
of a Wayside Inn is modeled on Chaucer's Canterbury 
Tales. The characters gathered in the old inn at Sudbury 
near Cambridge are described in the Prelude very much as 
Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims are presented in the Prologue. 
The first of the tales, "Paul Revere 's Ride," told by the 
landlord, has proved to be the most popular, though the 
poet's first tale, "The Birds of Killingworth," is more poetical, 
being appraised by Emerson as "serene, happy, and im- 
mortal." 

Although Longfellow wrote some dramas, he did not yet 
possess a strong dramatic gift. The Spanish Student, a play 
in three acts, appeared in 1843. With a beautiful Spanish 
dancing girl as heroine and a dashing Spanish student as 
hero, one might think that the poet would have produced a 
good strong play ; but such is not the case. It is a dramatic 
poem or closet drama rather than a good acting play. And 
so it is with Longfellow's other attempts at dramatization. 
The Golden Legend (1851), later included as the second part 
of the Christus trilogy, is in dramatic form, but it is merely 
a poem on "Der Arme Heinrich" legend which interprets 
rather beautifully some phases of medieval life. The other 
two parts of the Christus, namely, The New England Trage- 
dies (1868) and The Divine Tragedy (1872), are now ranked 
as practical failures in spite of the high estimate which the 
poet put upon this work of his later years. The Masque 
of Pandora is another dramatic work. It was put on the 
stage in Boston in 1881, but it failed to attract audiences. 

The last large work done by Longfellow was his excellent 
translation of Dante's Divina Commedia. He had contem- 
plated this task for some years and had done something on 
it, but it was not until after the death of his wife that he set 
himself seriously to complete the translation. He finally 
published it in 1870, prefixing to each of the three parts two 
original sonnets of surpassing beauty. The first of these 
we have chosen for reproduction here. The personal refer- 
ence in this sonnet to the loss of his wife is particularly 
pathetic. Her dress caught fire, and before her husband 
could put out the flames she was burned so badly that she 
died within a short time. 

Longfellow went abroad for the third time in 1868. He 



t88 American Literary Readings 

was received everywhere with enthusiasm. In England he 
met many celebrated literary and public men, was invited 
to dine with the queen, and was honored with the degree 
of LL.D. by Cambridge University. It is said that his 
works were as well known in England as Tennyson's, and 
naturally the masses of the people, as well as the notable 
persons, were glad to welcome one who had given them so 
much pleasure. And at home he was similarly honored. 
On his seventy-second birthday, the Cambridge school 
children presented to him a chair made from the wood of 
"the spreading chestnut tree" of Village Blacksmith fame, 
and the schools of the whole country celebrated his seventy- 
fifth birthday. He died on March 24, 1882, and was 
buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge. Long- 
fellow is the only American poet who has been honored with 
a micmorial in the Poet's Corner^ in Westminster Abbey. 

We usually say that Longfellow is the most popular of 
our poets, and yet he is not an American of the most char- 
acteristic type. He lived in an academic atmosphere all 
his life, and he represented the older European culture more 
than he did the fresh, vigorous American life. He knew 
books and life through books better than he knew men and 
life through actual contact with the busy world. But he 
was by no means a recluse; in fact, he was conspicuously 
generous in giving his time and personality to the entertain- 
ment of Americans and foreigners who sought him out. 
And it is said that his doors were never closed against the 
children. But, after all, his life was largely spent amid books 
— writing, teaching, reading, absorbed in the literatures 
of many nations. He felt deeply, but not passionately, 
and he controlled his emotions perfectly, both in life and 
in his poetry. He was no eager reformer or wild devotee 
burning with the white heat of enthusiasm and passion, 
but a calm, soberminded, peace-loving, home-loving bard. 
"Although he is not necessarily among the twelve greatest 
poets of the world, he is incontestably a great benefactor 
and a great man." 

During recent years there has been a tendency among 
some of the more sophisticated critics to speak slightingly 

iThe Longfellow bust was subscribed for by the Poet's English 
admirers in 1884. A few years later a fine medallion in honor of James 
Russell Lowell as American Minister to the Court of St. James was 
placed in the Chapter House of the Abbey. 



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 189 

of Longfellow's genius. They accuse him oE being over- 
moral, sentimental, simple, commonplace, unimaginative. 
They admit the popularity and power of his work so far as 
the general public is concerned, but they immediately dodge 
behind the insinuating query, "Is it art?" To all such 
critics we reply that to touch the hearts of a whole people 
to inspire youth and comfort age, to express the profoundest 
ideals of the individual and the national life in pleasing and 
enduring literary form is art of the only kind worthy of 
attention. It is to be hoped that the time will not soon 
come when American youths shall be robbed of the pleasure 
and inspiration that come to them from reading the simple, 
heart-moving poems of Henry W. Longfellow. 

(The standard life of Longfellow is that by his brother, Samuel 
Longfellow. This three-volume book contains a great many letters 
and extracts from Longfellow's Journals, and is a storehouse of informa- 
tion about the poet. A good short life is that by E. S. Robertson in 
the Great Writers Series.) 



EVANGELINE 

A TALE OF ACADIE 
1S47 

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the 

hemlocks, 
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the 

twilight. 
Stand like Diiiids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, 
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their 

bosoms. 
5 Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring 

ocean 
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the 

forest. 

This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that 

beneath it 
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the 

voice of the huntsman? 
Where is the thatch -roofed village, the home of Acadian 

farmers, — 
1 Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the wood- 
lands. 
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of 

heaven ? 
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers for ever 

departed ! 
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of 

October 
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er 

the ocean. 

[190] 



Evangeline 191 

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of 15 
Grand-Pre. 

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and 

is patient, 
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's 

devotion, 
List to the mournful tradition, still sung by the pines of the 

forest ; 
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy. 

Part the First 
I 
In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 20 
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre 
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the 

eastward. 
Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without 

number. 
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor 

incessant. 
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the 25 

flood-gates 
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the 

meadows. 
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and 

cornfields 
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the 

northward 
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the moun- 
tains 
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty 30 

Atlantic 
Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from their station 

descended. 
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village. 



192 American Literary Readings 

Strongly built were the houses, with frames of oak and of 

chestnut, 
Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the 

Henries. 
35 Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-windows-; and gables 

projecting 
Over the basement below protected and shaded the door- way . 
There in the tranquil evenings of summer, when brightly the 

sunset 
Lighted the village street, and gilded the vanes on the 

chimneys, 
Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white caps and in kirtles 
40 Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden 
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy shuttles within 

doors 
Mingled their sound with the whir of the wheels and the songs 

of the maidens. 
Solemnly down the street came the parish priest, and the 

children 
Paused in their play to kiss the hand he extended to bless 

them. 
45 Reverend walked he among them; and up rose matrons and 

maidens, 
Hailing his slow approacn with words of affectionate 

welcome. 
Then came the laborers home from the field, and serenely the 

sun sank 
Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. Anon from the 

belfry 
Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village 
50 Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending. 
Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and 

contentment. 
Thus dwelt together in love these simple Acadian farmers, — 
Dwelt in the love of God and of man . Alike were they free 

from 



Evangeline 193 

Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of 

repubHcs. 
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their 55 

windows ; 
But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of the 

owners ; 
There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in 

abundance. 

Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of 

Minas, 
Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Grand-Pre, 
Dwelt on his goodly acres; and with him, directing his house- eo 

hold. 
Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the 

village. 
Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy 

winters; 
Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is covered with snow- 
flakes ; 
White as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks as brown 

as the oak-lea ves; 
Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seventeen summers, es 
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by 

the way-side. 
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade 

of her tresses! 
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine that feed in the 

meadows. 
When in the harvest heat she bore to the reapers at noontide 
Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah ! fair in sooth was the 70 

maiden. 
Fairer was she when, on Sunday mom, while the bell from its 

turret 
Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the priest with his 

hyssop 



194 American Literary Readings 

Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters blessings upon 

them, 
Down the long street she passed, with her chaplet of beads 

and her missal, 
75 Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle of blue, and the 

ear-rings. 
Brought in the olden time from France, and since, as an heir- 
loom, 
Handed down from mother to child, through long 

generations. 
But a celestial brightness — a more ethereal beauty — 
Shone on her face and encircled her form, when, after 

confession, 
80 Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction 

upon her. 
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite 

music. 
Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the house of the farmer 
Stood on the side of a hill commanding the sea ; and a shady 
Sycamore grew by the door, with a woodbine wreathing 

around it. 
85 Rudely carved was the porch, with seats beneath; and a 

footpath 
Led through an orchard wide, and disappeared in the 

meadow. 
Under the sycamore-tree were hives overhung by a 

penthouse. 
Such as the traveller sees in regions remote by the 

road-side. 
Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed image of Mary. 
9 Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was the well with its 

moss-grown 
Bucket; fastened with iron, and near it a trough for the 

horses. 
Shielding the house from storms, on the north, were the 

bams and the farm-yard. 



Evangeline 195 

There stood the. broad-wheeled wains and the antique 

ploughs and the harrows; 
There were the folds for the sheep ; and there, in his feathered 

seraglio, 
Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the 95 

selfsame 
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. 
Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In ' 

each one 
Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase, 
Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. 
There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent 100 

inmates 
Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes 
Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation. 

Thus, at peace with God and the world, the farmer of 

Grand-Pre 
Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline governed his 

household. 
Many a youth, as he knelt in the church and opened his 105 

missal, 
Fixed his eyes upon her, as the saint of his deepest devotion; 
Happy was he who -might touch her hand or the hem of her 

garment ! 
Many a suitor came to her door, by the darkness befriended, 
And as he knocked and waited to hear the sound of her 

footsteps. 
Knew not which beat the louder, his heart or the knocker of 110 

iron; 
Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint of the village, 
Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the dance as he 

whispered 
Hurried words of love, that seemed a part of the music. 
But, among all who came, young Gabriel only was welcome; 
Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith, 115 



196 American Literary Readings 

Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men ; 
For since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations. 
Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people. 
Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest 

childhood 
120 Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician, 
Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them 

their letters 
Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns of the church and 

the plain-song. 
But when the hymn was sung, and the daily lesson completed, 
Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of Basil the black- 
smith. 
125 There at the door they stood, with wondering eyes to behold 

him 
Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything, 
Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the 

cart-wheel 
Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. 
Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering dark- 
ness 
130 Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny 

and crevice, 
Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring 

bellows. 
And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the 

ashes. 
Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the 

chapel. 
Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle, 
135 Down the hill-side bounding, they glided away o'er the 

meadow. 
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the 

rafters, 
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the 

swallow 



Evangeline 197 

Brings from the shore of the sea to restore the sight of its 

fiedgHngs ; 
Lucky was he who found that stone in the nest of the 

swallow ! 
Thus passed a few swift years, and they no longer were ho 

children. 
He was a valiant youth, and his face, like the face of the 

morning. 
Gladdened the earth with its light, and ripened thought 

into action. 
She was a woman now, with the heart and hopes of a woman. 
"Sunshine of Saint Eulalie" was she called; for that was the 

sunshine 
Which, as the farmers believed, would load their orchards 145 

with apples; 
She, too, would bring to her husband's house delight and 

abundance, 
Filling it full of love and the ruddy faces of children. 



II 

Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder 

and longer, 
And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. 
Birds of passage sailed through the leaden air, from the iso 

ice-bound. 
Desolate northern bays to the shores of tropical islands. 
Harvests were gathered in; and wild with the winds of 

September 
Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob of old with the 

angel. 
All the signs foretold a winter long and inclement. 
Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had hoarded their us 

honey 
Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian hunters asserted 
Cold would the winter be, for thick was the fur of the foxes. 



ig8 American Literary Readings 

Such was the advent of autumn. Then followed that 

beautiful season, 
Called by the pious Acadian peasants the Summer of 

All-Saints! 
160 Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the 

landscape 
Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of childhood. 
Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the restless heart of 

the ocean 
Was for a moment consoled. All sounds were in hamiony 

blended. 
Voices of children at play, the crowing of cocks in the farm- 
yards, 
165 Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of 

pigeons, 
All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love, and the 

great sun 
Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors 

around him; 
While arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, 
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the 

forest 
170 Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles 

and jewels. 

Now recommenced the reign of rest and affection and 

stillness. 
Day with its burden and heat had departed, and twilight 

descending 
Brought back the evening star to the sky, and the herds to 

the homestead. 
Pawing the ground they came, and resting their necks on 

each other, 
175 And with their nostrils distended inhaling the freshness of 

evening. 
Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's beautiful heifer. 



Evangeline 199 

Proud of her snow-white hide, and the ribbon that waved 

from her collar, 
Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of human affection. 
Then came the shepherd back with his bleating flocks from 

the sea-side, 
Where was their favorite pasture. Behind them followed iso 

the watch-dog, 
Patient, full of importance, and grand in the pride of his 

instinct, 
Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly 
Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers; 
Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd slept; their 

protector. 
When from the forest at night, through the starry silence, i85 

the wolves howled. 
Late, with the rising moon, returned the wains from the 

marshes. 
Laden with briny hay, that filled the air with its odor. 
Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on their manes and 

their fetlocks, 
While aloft on their shoulders the wooden and ponderous 

saddles. 
Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned with tassels of 190 

crimson. 
Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks heavy with blossoms. 
Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and yielded their 

udders 
Unto the milkmaid's hand; whilst loud and in regular 

cadence 
Into the sounding pails the foaming streamlets descended. 
Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were heard in the 195 

farm -yard, 
Echoed back by the barns. Anon they sank into stillness; 
Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the 

barn-doors. 
Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a season was silent. 



200 American Literary Readings 

In-doors, warm by the wide-mouthed fireplace, idly the 

farmer 
200 Sat in his elbow-chair, and watched how the flames and the 

smoke-wreaths 
Struggled together like foes in a burning city. Behind him. 
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with gestures fantastic. 
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished away into 

darkness. 
Faces, cliimsily carved in oak, on the back of his arm-chair 
205 Laughed in the flickering light, and the pewter plates on the 

dresser 
Caught and reflected the flame, as shields of armies the sun- 
shine. 
Fragments of song the old man sang, and carols of Christmas, 
Such as at home, in the olden time, his fathers before him 
Sang in their Norman orchards and bright Burgundian 

vineyards. 
. 210 Close at her father's side was the gentle Evangeline seated, 
Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in the corner behind 

her. 
Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was its diligent shuttle, 
While the monotonous drone of the wheel, like the drone 

of a bagpipe. 
Followed the old man's song, and united the fragments 

together. 
215 As in a church, when the chant of the choir at intervals 

ceases. 
Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words of the priest at the 

altar. 
So, in each pause of the song, with measured motion the 

clock clicked. 

Thus as they sat, there were footsteps heard, and, suddenly 
lifted. 
Sounded the wooden latch, and the door swung back on its 
hinges. 



Evangeline 201 

Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it was Basil the 2:0 

blacksmith, 
And by her beating heart Evangeline knew who was with 

him. 
"Welcome!" the farmer exclaimed, as their footsteps 

paused on the threshold, 
"Welcome, Basil, my friend! Come, take thy place on the 

settle 
Close by the chimney-side, which is always empty without 

thee; 
Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and the box of 2:5 

tobacco ; 
Never so much thyself art thou as when through the curling 
Smoke of the pipe or the forge thy friendly and jovial face 

gleams 
Round and red as the harvest moon through the mist of the 

marshes." 
Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the 

blacksmith. 
Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside: — 230 
"Benedict Bellcfontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy 

ballad! 
Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled 

with 
Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them. 
Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a 

horseshoe." 
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought 2:5 

him. 
And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly 

continued:- — 
"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their 

anchors 
Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their cannon pointed 

against us. 



202 American Literary Readings 

■ What their design may be is unknown; but ah are com- 
manded 
240 On the morrow to meet in the church, where his Majesty's 
mandate 

Will be proclaimed as law in the land. Alas! in the mean 
time 

Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of the people." 

Then made answer the farmer: — "Perhaps some friendlier 
purpose 

Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps the harvests in 
England 
245 By untimely rains or untimelier heat have been blighted, 

And from our bursting barns they would feed their cattle and 
children." 

"Not so thinketh the folk in the village," said, warmly, the 
blacksmith, 

Shaking his head, as in doubt; then, heaving a sigh, he con- 
tinued: — 

"Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau Sejour, nor Port 
Royal. 
250 Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its out- 
skirts. 

Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to-morrow. 

Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all 
kinds; 

Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe 
of the mower." 

Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial 
farmer : — 
255 "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our 
cornfields. 

Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged by the ocean, 

Than were our fathers in forts, besieged by the enemy's 
cannon. 

Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may no shadow of 
sorrow 



Evangeline 203 

Fall on this house and hearth; for this is the night of the 

contract. 
Built are the house and the barn. The merry lads of the 260 

village 
Strongly have built them and well; and, breaking the glebe 

round about them, 
Filled the barn with hay, and the house with food for a 

twelvemonth. 
Rene Leblanc will be here anon, with his papers and ink- 
horn. 
Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the joy of our 

children ? ' ' 
As apart by the window she stood, with her hand in her 205 

lover's, 
Blushing Evangeline heard the words that her father had 

spoken. 
And as they died on his lips, the worthy notary entered. 

Ill 

Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean, . 

Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary 
public ; 

Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung 2-0 

Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with 
horn bows 

Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. 

Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred 

Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great 
watch tick. 

Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a 275 
captive. 

Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the 
English. 

Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, 

Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and child- 
like. 



204 American Literary Readings 

He was beloved by all, and most of all by the children; 
280 For he told them tales of the Loup-garou in the forest, 
And of the goblin that came in the night to water the horses, 
And of the white Letiche, the ghost of a child who 

unchristened 
Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the chambers of 

children ; 
And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked in the stable, 
285 And how the fever was cured by a spider shut up in a, 

nutshell, 
And of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and 

horseshoes. 
With whatsoever else was writ in the lore of the village. 
Then up rose from his seat by the fireside Basil the black- 
smith. 
Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly extending his 

right hand, 
290 "Father Leblanc," he exclaimed, "thou hast heard the talk 

in the village. 
And, perchance, canst tell us some news of these ships and 

their errand." 
Then with modest demeanor made answer the notary 

public: — 
"Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet am never the 

wiser; 
And what their errand may be, I know not better than 

others. 
295 Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention 
Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest 

us?" 
"God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible 

blacksmith ; 
"Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and 

the wherefore? 
Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the 

strongest!" 



Evangeline 205 

But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary 300 

pubHc : — 
"Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice 
Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled 

me. 
When as ct captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal." 
This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it 
When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done 305 

them. 
"Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember. 
Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue of Justice 
Stood in the public square, upholding the scales in its left 

hand. 
And in its right a sword, as an emblem that justice presided 
Over the laws of the land, and the hearts and homes of the 310 

people. 
Even the birds had built their nests in the scales of the 

balance. 
Having no fear of the sword that flashed in the sunshine 

above them. 
But in the course of time the laws of the land were corrupted ; 
Might took the place of right, and the weak were oppressed, 

and the mighty 
Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced in a nobleman's 315 

palace 
That a necklace of pearls was lost, and ere long a suspicion 
Fell on an orphan girl who lived as maid in the household. 
She, after form of trial condemned to die on the scaffold, 
Patiently met her doom at the foot of the statue of Justice. 
As to her Father in heaven her innocent spirit ascended, 320 
Lo ! o'er the city a tempest rose ; and the bolts of the thunder 
Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its 

left hand 
Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the 

balance. 
And in the hollow thereof was found the nest of a magpie, 



2o6 American Literary Readings 

325 Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of pearls was 

inwoven." 
Silenced, but not convinced, when the story was ended, the 

blacksmith 
Stood like a man who fain would speak, but findeth no 

language ; 
All his thoughts were congealed into lines on his face, as 

the vapors 
Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window-panes in the 

winter. 

330 Then Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp on the table. 
Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard with home- 
brewed 
Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village 

of Grand-Pre; 
While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and 

inkhom. 
Wrote with a steady hand the date, and the age of the parties, 
33 5 Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle. 
Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were 

completed, 
And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin. 
Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the 

table 
Three times the old man's fee in solid pieces of silver; 
340 And the notary, rising, and blessing the bride and the 

bridegroom, 
Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank to their welfare. 
Wiping the foam from his lip, he solemnly bowed and 

departed. 
While in silence the others sat and mused by the fireside. 
Till Evangeline brought the draught-board out of its corner. 
345 Soon was the game begun. In friendly contention the old 

men 
Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful manoeuvre, 



Evangeline 207 

Laughed when a man was crowned, or a breach was made 

in the king-row. 
Meanwhile apart, in the twihght gloom of a window's 

embrasure. 
Sat the lovers, and whispered together, beholding the moon 

rise 
Over the pallid sea and the silvery mist of the meadows. 35c 
Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven. 
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. 

Thus passed the evening away. Anon the bell from the 

belfry 
Rang out the hour of nine, the village curfew, and straight- 
way 
Rose the guests and departed; and silence reigned in the 355 

household. 
Many a farewell word and sweet good-night on the door-step 
Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and filled it with 

gladness. 
Carefully then were covered the embers that glowed on the 

hearth-stone, 
And on the oaken stairs resounded the tread of the farmer. 
Soon with a soundless step the foot of Evangeline followed, seo 
Up the staircase moved a luminous space in the darkness, 
Lighted less by the lamp than the shining face of the maiden. 
Silent she passed through the hall, and entered the door of 

her chamber. 
Simple that chamber was, with its curtains of white, and its 

clothes-press 
Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves were carefully 365 

folded 
Linen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of Evangeline woven. 
This was the precious dower she would bring to her husband 

in marriage. 
Better than flocks and herds, being proofs of her skill as a 

housewife. 



2o8 American Literary Readings 

Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the mellow and radiant 

moonlight 
3 70 Streamed through the windows and lighted the room, till the 

heart of the maiden 
Swelled and obeyed its power, like the tremulous tides of the 

ocean. 
Ah! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, as she stood with 
Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming floor of her chamber ! 
Little she dreamed that below, among the trees of the 

orchard, 
375 Waited her lover, and watched for the gleam of her lamp and 

her shadow. 
Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times a feeling of 

sadness 
Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of clouds in the 

moonlight 
Flitted across the floor and darkened the room for a moment. 
* And as she gazed from the window she saw serenely the 

moon pass 
380 Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her 

footsteps. 
As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with 

Hagar ! 

IV 

Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the village of 

Grand- Pre. 
Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air the Basin of 

Minas, 
Where the ships, with their wavering shadows, were riding 

at anchor. 
3 85 Life had long been astir in the village, and clamorous labor 
Knocked with its hundred hands at the golden gates of the 

morning. 
Now from the country around, from the farms and the 

neighboring hamlets, 



Evangeline 209 

Came in their holiday dresses the bhthe Acadian peasants. 
Many a glad good-morrow and jocund laugh from the young 

folk 
Made the bright air brighter, as up from the numerous 390 

meadows, 
Where no path could be seen but the track of wheels in the 

greensward. 
Group after group appeared, and joined, or passed on the 

highway. 
Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of labor were silenced. 
Thronged were the streets with people; and noisy groups at 

the house-doors 
Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and gossiped together. 395 
Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and 

feasted ; 
For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, 
All things were held in common, and what one had was 

another's. 
Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed more abundant : 
For Evangeline stood among the guests of her father; 400 
Bright was her face with smiles, and words of welcome and 

gladness 
Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed the cup as she gave 

it. 

Under the open sky, in the odorous air of the orchard. 
Stripped of its golden fruit, was spread the feast of betrothal. 
There in the shade of the porch were the priest and the 405 

notary seated; 
There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil the blacksmith. 
Not far withdrawn from these, by the cider-press and the 

beehives, 
Michael the fiddler was placed, with the gayest of hearts and 

of waistcoats. 
Shadow and light from the leaves alternately played on his 

snow-white 



2IO American Literary Readings 

410 Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly face of the 

fiddler 
Glowed like a living coal when the ashes are blown from the 

embers. 
Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant sound of his fiddle, 
Tons les Bourgeois de Chartres, and Le Carillon de Dunkerque, 
And anon with his wooden shoes beat time to the music. 
415 Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the dizzying dances 
Under the orchard-trees and down the path to the meadows ; 
Old folk and young together, and children mingled among 

them. 
Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, Benedict's daughter! 
Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son of the blacksmith! 

420 So passed the morning away. And lo! with a summons 

sonorous 
Sounded the bell from its tower, and over the meadows a 

drum beat. 
Thronged ere long was the church with men. Without, in 

the churchyard. 
Waited the women. They stood by the graves, and hung on 

the head-stones 
Garlands of autimin-leaves and evergreens fresh from the 

forest. 
425 Then came the guard from the ships, and, marching proudly 

among them, 
Entered the sacred portal. With loud and dissonant clangor 
Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and 

casement, — 
Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal 
Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the 

soldiers. 
430 Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of 

the altar, 
Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal com- 
mission. 



Evangeline 211 

"You are convened this day," he said, "by his Majesty's 

orders. 
Clement and kind has he been; but how you have answered 

his kindness, 
Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my 

temper 
Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be 435 

grievous. 
Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our 

monarch ; 
Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all 

kinds 
Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from 

this province 
Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell 

there 
Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people! 440 
Prisoners now I declare you; for such is his Majesty's 

pleasure!" 
As, when the air is serene in the sultry solstice of summer. 
Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly sling of the 

hailstones 
Beats down the farmer's corn in the field and shatters his 

windows, 
Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground with thatch from 445 

the house-roofs. 
Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break their enclosures; 
So on the hearts of the people descended the words of the 

speaker. 
Silent a moment they stood in speechless wonder, and then 

rose 
Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, 
And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door- 450 

way. 
Vain was the hope of escape; and cries and fierce imprecations 



212 American Literary Readings 

Rang through the house of prayer; and high o'er the heads 

of the others 
Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the black- 
smith, 
As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. 
455 Flushed was his face and distorted with passion; and wildly 

he shouted: 
"Down with the tyrants of England! we never have sworn 

them allegiance! 
Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and 

our harvests!" 
More he fain would have said, but the merciless hand of a 

soldier 
Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged him down to the 

pavement. 

460 In the midst of the strife and tumult of angry contention, 
Lo! the door of the chancel opened, and Father Felician 
Entered, with serious mien, and ascended the steps of the 

altar. 
Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture he awed into 

silence 
All that clamorous throng; and thus he spake to his 

people ; 
465 Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents measured and 

mournful 
Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, distinctly the clock 

strikes. 
"What is this that ye do, my children? what madness has 

seized you? 
Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught 

you. 
Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another! 
470 Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and 

privations ? 
Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness? 



Evangeline 213 

This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you 

profane it 
Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred ? 
Lo ! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon 

you! 
See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy 475 

compassion ! 
Hark ! how those lips still repeat the prayer, 'O Father, forgive 

them ! ' 
Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail 

us. 
Let us repeat it now, and say, 'O Father, forgive them! ' " 
Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in the hearts of his 

people 
Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded the passionate 48o 

outbreak ; 
And they repeated his prayer, and said, "O Father, 

forgive them!" 

Then came the evening service. The tapers gleamed from 

the altar. 
Fervent and deep was the voice of the priest, and the people 

responded. 
Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria 
Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with 435 

devotion translated. 
Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven. 

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and 

on all sides 
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and 

children. 
Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right 

hand 
Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, 490 

descending, 



214 American Literary Readings 

Lighted the village street with mysterious splendor, and 

roofed each 
Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and emblazoned its 

windows. 
Long within had been spread the snow-white cloth on the 

table ; 
There stood the wheaten loaf, and the honey fragrant with 

wild-flowers ; 
495 There stood the tankard of ale, and the cheese fresh brought 

from the dairy; 
And at the head of the board the great arm-chair of the 

farmer. 
Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's door, as the sunset 
Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the broad ambrosial , 

meadows. 
Ah! on her spirit within a deeper shadow had fallen, 
500 And from the fields of her soul a fragrance celestial 

ascended, — 
Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and forgiveness, and 

patience ! 
Then, all-forgetful of self, she wandered into the village, 
Cheering with looks and words the disconsolate hearts of the 

women, 
As o'er the darkening fields with lingering steps they 

departed, 
505 Urged by their household cares, and the weary feet of their 

children. 
Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering 

vapors 
Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet descending from 

Sinai. 
Sweetly over the village the bell of the Angelus sounded. 
Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the church Evangeline 

lingered. 
510 All was silent within; and in vain at the door and the 

windows 



Evangeline 215 

Stood she, and listened and looked, until, overcome by 

emotion, 
"Gabriel!" cried she aloud with tremulous voice; but no 

answer 
Came from the graves of the dead, nor the gloomier grave 

of the living. 
Slowly at length she returned to the tenantless house of her 

father. 
Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the board was the 515 

supper untasted, 
Empty and drear was each room, and haunted with phan- 
toms of terror. 
Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the floor of her 

chamber. 
In the dead of the night she heard the whispering rain fall 
Loud on the withered leaves of the sycamore-tree by the 

window. 
Keenly the lightning flashed; and the voice of the echoing 520 

thunder 
Told her that God was in heaven, and governed the world 

he created! 
Then she remembered the tale she had heard of the justice 

of Heaven; 
Soothed was her troubled soul, and she peacefully slumbered 

till morning. 



Four times the sun had risen and set; and now on the 

fifth day 
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping maids of the farm- 525 

house. 
Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and mournful procession, 
Came from the neighboring hamlets and farms the Acadian 

women, 
Driving in ponderous wains their household goods to the 

sea-shore, 



2i6 American Literary Readings 

Pausing and looking back to gaze once more on their 

dwellings, 
530 Ere they were shut from sight by the winding road and the 

woodland. 
Close at their sides their children ran, and urged on the 

oxen, 
While in their little hands they clasped some fragments of 

playthings. 

Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they hurried; and there 
on the sea-beach 
Piled in confusion lay the household goods of the peasants. 
535 All day long between the shore and the ships did the boats 

ply; 

All day long the wains came laboring down from the village. 
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was near to his setting, 
Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of drums from the 

churchyard. 
Thither the women and children thronged. On a sudden the 

church-doors 
540 Opened, and forth came the guard, and marching in gloomy 

procession 
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, Acadian farmers. 
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from their homes and 

their country, 
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they are weary and 

way-worn. 
So with songs on their lips the Acadian peasants descended 
54 5 Down from the church to the shore, amid their wives and 

their daughters. 
Foremost the young men came; and, raising together their 

voices. 
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the Catholic Missions : — 
"Sacred heart of the Saviour! O inexhaustible fountain! 
Fill our hearts this day with strength and submission and 

patience!" 



Evangeline 2 1 7 

Then the old men, as they marched, and the women that 550 

stood by the way-side 
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in the sunshine 

above them 
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed. 

Half-way down to the shore Evangeline waited in silence, 
Not overcome with grief, but strong in the hour of 

affliction, — 
Calmly and sadly waited, until the procession approached her, 555 
And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale with emotion. 
Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly running to meet 

him, 
Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on his shoulder, and 

whispered : 
"Gabriel! be of good cheer! for if we love one another, 
Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever mischances may seo 

happen!" 
Smiling she spake these words; then suddenly paused, for her 

father 
Saw she slowly advancing. Alas! how changed was his 

aspect ! 
Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the fire from his eye, 

and his footstep 
Heavier seemed with the weight of the heavy heart in his 

bosom. 
But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped his neck and ses 

embraced him. 
Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort 

availed not. 
Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on that mournful 

procession. 

There disorder prevailed, and the tumult and stir of 
embarking. 
Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the confusion 



2i8 American Literary Readings 

670 Wives were torn from their husbands, and mothers, too late, 

saw their children 
Left on the land, extending their arms, with wildest 

entreaties. 
So unto separate ships were Basil and Gabriel carried. 
While in despair on the shore Evangeline stood with her 

father. 
Half the task was not done when the sun went down, and 

the twilight 
575 Deepened and darkened around; and in haste the refluent 

ocean 
Fled away from the shore, and left the line of the sand-beach 
Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp and the slippery- 
seaweed. 
Farther back in the midst of the household goods and the 

wagons. 
Like to a Gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a battle, 
580 All escape cut off by the sea, and the sentinels near 

them. 
Lay encamped for the night the houseless Acadian farmers. 
Back to its nethermost caves retreated the bellowing ocean. 
Dragging adown the beach the rattling pebbles, and leaving 
Inland and far up the shore the stranded boats of the 

sailors. 
585 Then, as the night descended, the herds returned from their 

pastures ; 
Sweet was the moist, still air with the odor of milk from 

their udders; 
Lowing they waited, and long, at the well-known bars of the 

farm-yard, — 
Waited and looked in vain for the voice and the hand of the 

milkmaid. 
Silence reigned in the streets; from the church no Angelus 

sounded, 
590 Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed no lights from the 

windows. 



Evangeline 219 . 

But on the shores meanwhile the evening fires had been 

kindled, 
Built of the drift-wood thrown on the sands from wrecks in 

the tempest. 
Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful faces were 

gathered, 
Voices of women were heard, and of men, and the crying of 

children. 
Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to hearth in his 595 

parish, 
Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and blessing and 

cheering, 
Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore. 
Thus he approached the place where Evangeline sat with her 

father. 
And in the flickering light beheld the face of the old man. 
Haggard and hollow and wan, and without either thought or 600 

emotion. 
E'en as the face of a clock from which the hands have been 

taken. 
Vainly Evangeline strove with words and caresses to cheer 

him. 
Vainly offered him food; yet he moved not, he looked not, 

he spake not. 
But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the flickering fire- 

Hght. 
" Benedictte!" murmured the priest, in tones of com- cos 

passion. 
More he fain would have said, but his heart was full, and his 

accents 
Faltered and paused on his lips, as the feet of a child on a 

threshold, 
Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the awful presence of 

sorrow. 
Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the head of the 

maiden, 



2 20 American Literary Readings 

610 Raising his eyes full of tears, to the silent stars that 

above them 
Moved on their way, unperturbed by the wrongs and sorrows 

of mortals. 
Then sat he down at her side, and they wept together in 

silence. 

Suddenly rose from the south a light, as in autimin the 

blood-red 
Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the 

horizon 
615 Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and 

meadow. 
Seizing the rocks and the rivers, and piling huge shadows 

together. 
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on the roofs of the 

village. 
Gleamed on the sky and the sea, and the ships that lay in the 

roadstead. 
Columns of shining smoke uprose, and flashes of flame were 
620 Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, like the quivering 

hands of a martyr. 
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the burning thatch, 

and, uplifting. 
Whirled them aloft through the air, at once from a hundred 

house-tops 
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of flame intermingled. 

These things beheld in dismay the crowd on the shore and 
on shipboard. 
625 Speechless at first they stood, then cried aloud in their 
anguish, 
"We shall behold no more our homes in the village of Grand- 

Pre!" 
Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow in the farm-yards, 
Thinking the day had dawned ; and anon the lowing of cattle 



Evangeline 221 

Came on the evening breeze, by the barking of dogs inter- 
rupted. 

Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles the sleeping 63 
encampments 

Far in the western prairies or forests that skirt the Nebraska, 

When the wild horses affrighted sweep by with the speed 
of the whirlwind, 

Or the loud-bellowing herds of buffaloes rush to the river. 

Such was the sound that arose on the night, as the herds and 
the horses 

Broke through their folds and fences, and madly rushed o'er ess 
the meadows. 

Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speechless, the priest and 

the maiden 
Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened and widened 

before them; 
And as they turned at length to speak to their silent com- 
panion, 
Lo! from his seat he had fallen, and stretched abroad on the 

sea-shore 
Motionless lay his form, from which the soul had departed. 64 
Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, and the maiden 
Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud in her terror. 
Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her head on his 

bosom. 
Through the long night she lay in deep, oblivious slumber; 
And when she woke from the trance, she beheld a multitude 645 

near her. 
Faces of friends she beheld, that were mournfully gazing upon 

her, 
Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of saddest compassion. 
Still the blaze of the burning village illumined the landscape, 
Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed on the faces around 

her. 
And like the day of doom it seemed to her wavering senses, eso 



222 American Literary Readings 

Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said to the people: 
"Let us bury him here by the sea. When a happier season 
Brings us again to our homes from the unknown land of our 

exile, 
Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid in the churchyard." 
B55 Such were the words of the priest. And there in haste by 
the seaside. 
Having the glare of the burning village for funeral torches, 
But without bell or book, they buried the farmer of Grand- 

Pre. 
And as the voice of the priest repeated the service of sorrow, 
Lo! with a mournful sound, like the voice of a vast congrega- 
tion, 
560 Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its roar with the 
dirges. 
'T was the returning tide, that afar from the waste of the 

ocean. 
With the first dawn of the day, came heaving and hurrying 

landward. 
Then recommenced once more the stir and noise of embark- 
ing; 
And with the ebb of that tide the ships sailed out of the 
harbor, 
665 Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, and the village 
in ruins. 

Part the Second 

I 

Many a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand- 

Pre, 
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed, 
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile, — 
Exile without an end, and without an example in story. 
670 Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Acadians landed; 
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, when the wind 
from the northeast 



Evangeline 223 

Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken the Banks of 
Newfoundland. 

Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wandered from city to 
to city. 

From the cold lakes of the North to sultry Southern sa- 
vannas, — 

From the bleak shores of the sea to the lands where the 075 
Father of Waters 

Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them down to the 
ocean. 

Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of . the 
mammoth. 

Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, 
heart-broken, 

Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor 
a fireside. 
• Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the eso 
* churchyards. 

Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and 
wandered. 

Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently siiffering all things. 

Fair was she and young; but, alas! before her extended, 

Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of life, with its path- 
way 

Marked by the graves of those who had sorrowed and suf- ess 
fered before her. 

Passions long extinguished, and hopes long dead and aban- 
doned. 

As the emigrant's way o'er the Western desert is marked by 

Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that bleach in the 
sunshine. 

Something there was in her life incomplete, imperfect, unfin- 
ished ; 

As if a morning of June, with all its music and sunshine, 69o 

Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, slowly descended 

Into the east again, from whence it late had arisen. 



2 24 American Literary Readings 

Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged by the fever 

within her. 
Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and thirst of the 

spirit, 
695 She would commence again her endless search and endeavor; 
Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses 

and tombstones. 
Sat by some nameless grave, and thought that perhaps in its 

bosom 
He was already at rest, and she longed to slumber beside 

him. 
Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticulate whisper, 
700 Came with its airy hand to point and beckon her forward. 
Sometimes she spake with those who had seen her beloved 

and known him, 
But it was long ago, in some far-off place or forgotten. 
"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said they; "0 yes! we have seen 

him. 
He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both have gone to 

the prairies; 
705 Coiireurs-dcs-Bois are they, and famous hunters and trap- 
pers." 
"Gabriel Lajeunesse!" said others; "0 yes! we have 

seen him. * 

He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisiana." 
Then would they say: "Dear child! why dream and wait 

for him longer? 
Are there not other youths as fair as Gabriel? others 
710 Who have hearts as tender and true, and spirits as loyal? 
Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, who has loved 

thee 
Many a tedious year; come, give him thy hand and be 

happy ! 
Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. Catherine's tresses." 
Then would Evangeline answer, serenely but sadly, "I 

cannot ! 



Evangeline 225 

Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and 715 

not elsewhere. 
For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the 

pathway. 
Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness. " 
And thereupon the priest, her friend and father-confessor, 
Said, with a smile: "O daughter! thy God thus speaketh 

within thee! 
Talk not of wasted affection, — affection never was wasted; 720 
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning 
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of 

refreshment ; 
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the 

fountain. 
Patience! accomplish thy labor; accomplish thy work of 

affection ! 
Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is god- 725 

like. 
Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till the heart is made 

godlike, 
Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy 

of heaven!" 
Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline labored and 

waited. 
Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the ocean, 
But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, 730 

"Despair not!" 
Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless dis- 
comfort. 
Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence. 
Let me essay, O Muse! to follow the wanderer's foot- 
steps ; - — 
Not through each devious path, each changeful year of 

existence ; 
But as a traveller follows a streamlet's course through the 735 

valley : 



226 American Literary Readings 

Far from its margin at times, and seeing the gleam of its 

water 
Here and there in some open space, and at intervals only; 
Then drawing nearer its banks, through sylvan glooms that 

conceal it, 
Though he behold it not, he can hear its continuous murmur; 
740 Happy, at length, if he find the spot where it reaches an 

outlet. 

II 
It was the month of May. Far down the Beautiful 

River, 
Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of the Wabash, 
Into the golden stream of the broad and swift Mississippi, 
Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed by Acadian 

boatmen. 
745 It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, from the ship- 
wrecked 
Nation, scattered along the coast, now floating together. 
Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common mis- 
fortune ; 
Men and women and children, who, guided by hope or by 

hearsay. 
Sought for their kith and their kin among the few-acred 

farmers 
750 On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of fair Opelousas. 
With them Evangeline went, and her guide, the Father 

Felician. 
Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wilderness sombre • 

with forests, 
Day after day they glided adown the turbulent river; 
Night after night, by their blazing fires, encamped on its 

borders. 
755 Now through rushing chutes, among green islands, where 

plumelike 
Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, they swept with 

the current. 



Evangeline 227 

Then emerged into broad lagoons, where silvery sand-bars 
Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling waves of their 

margin, 
Shining with snow-white plumes, large flocks of pelicans 

waded. 
Level the landscape grew, and along the shores of the river, 700 
Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, 
Stood the houses of planters, with negro-cabins and dove- 
cots. 
They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual 

summer, 
Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange 

and citron. 
Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward, ves 
They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the 

Bayou of Plaquemine, 
Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters, 
Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction. 
Over their heads the towering and tenebrous boughs of the 

cypress 
Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses in mid-air 770 

Waved like banners that hang on the walls of ancient 

cathedrals. 
Deathlike the silence seemed, and unbroken, save by the 

herons 
Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees returning at sunset. 
Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with demoniac 

laughter. 
Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the 776 

water. 
Gleamed on the colrmins of cypress and cedar sustaining 

the arches, 
Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks 

in a ruin. 
Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things 

around them; 



2 28 American Literary Readings 

And o'er their spirits there came a feeHng of wonder and 

sadness, — ■ 
780 Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be com-. 

passed. 
As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies. 
Far in advance are closed the leaves of the shrinking mimosa, 
So, at the hoof -beats of fate, with sad forebodings of evil. 
Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke of doom has 

attained it. 
785 But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a vision, that 

faintly 
Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her on through the 

moonlight. 
It was the thought of her brain that assumed the shape of 

a phantom. 
Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel wandered before 

her, 
And every stroke of the oar now brought him nearer and 

nearer. 

790 Then in his place, at the prow of the boat, rose one of 

the oarsmen, 
And, as a signal sound, if others like them peradventure 
Sailed on those gloomy and midnight streams, blew a 

blast on his bugle. 
Wild through the dark colonnades and corridors leafy the 

blast rang. 
Breaking the seal of silence, and giving tongues to the 

forest. 
795 Soundless above them the banners of moss just stirred to 

the music. 
Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance, 
Over the watery floor, and beneath the reverberant branches ; 
But not a voice replied; no answer came from the darkness; 
And when the echoes had ceased, like a sense of pain was 

the silence. 



Evangeline 229 

Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen rowed through the 800 

midnight, 
Silent at times, then singing familiar Canadian boat-songs, 
Such as they sang of old on their own Acadian rivers. 
And through the night were heard the mysterious sounds 

of the desert, 
Far off, indistinct, as of wave or wind in the forest, 
Mixed with the whoop of the crane and the roar of the sos 

grim alligator. 

Thus ere another noon they emerged from those shades; 

and before them 
Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the Atchafalaya. 
Water-lilies in myriads rocked on the slight undulations 
Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent in beauty, the 

lotus 
Lifted her golden cro^vn above the heads of the boatmen, sio 
Faint was the air with the odorous breath of magnolia 

blossoms, 
And with the heat of noon; and numberless sylvan islands. 
Fragrant and thickly embowered with blossoming hedges of 

roses. 
Near to whose shores they glided along, invited to slumber. 
Soon by the fairest of these their weary oars were 815 

suspended. 
Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that grew by the 

margin, 
Safely their boat was moored; and scattered about on the 

greensward. 
Tired with their midnight toil, the weary travellers slum- 
bered. 
Over them vast and high extended the cope of a cedar. 
Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet-flower and the 820 

grape-vine 
Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the ladder of Jacob, 
On whose pendulous stairs the angels ascending, descending. 



230 American Literary Readings 

Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted from blossom 

to blossom. 
Such was the vision EvangeHne saw as she slumbered beneath 

it. 
825 Filled was her heart with love, and the dawn of an opening 

heaven 
Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of regions celestial. 

Nearer and ever nearer, among the numberless islands, 
Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away o'er the water, 
Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of hunters and 

trappers. 
830 Northward its prow was turned, to the land of the bison 

and beaver. 
At the helm sat a youth, with countenance thoughtful and 

careworn. 
Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his brow, and a 

sadness 
Somewhat beyond his years on his face was legibly written. 
Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, unhappy and 

restless, 

835 Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of self and of sorrow. 

Sv/iftly they glided along, close under the lee of the island, 

But by the opposite bank, and behind a screen of palmettos, 

So that they saw not the boat, where it lay concealed in the 

willows, 
And undisturbed by the dash of their oars, and unseen, were 

the sleepers; 
840 Angel of God was there none to awaken the slumbering 

maiden. 
Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of a cloud on the 

prairie. 
After the sound of their oars on the tholes had died in the 

distance. 
As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, and the maiden 
Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, "0 Father Felician! 



Evangeline 231 

Something says in my heart that near me Gabriel wanders. 845 
Is it a fcoHsh dream, an idle and vague superstition? 
Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit? " 
Then, with a blush, she added: "Alas for my credulous 

fancy ! 
Unto ears like thine such words as these have no meaning." 
But made answer the reverend man, and he smiled as he sso 

answered: — 
"Daughter, thy words are not idle; nor are they to me 

without meaning. 
Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the 

surface 
Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is 

hidden. 
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls 

illusions. 
Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away to the south- sss 

ward. 
On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur and 

St. Martin. 
There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her 

bridegroom, 
There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheep- 
fold. 
Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fniit- 

trees ; 
Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens seo 
Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the 

forest. 
They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana." 

And with these words of cheer they arose and continued 
their journey. 
Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon 
Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; 86s 
Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest 



232 American Literary Readings 

Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled 

together. 
Hanging between two skies, a cloud with edges of silver, 
Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on the motionless 

water. 
870 Filled was Evangeline's heart with inexpressible sweetness. 
Touched by the magic spell, the sacred fountains of 

feeling 
Glowed with the light of love, as the skies and waters 

around her. 
Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest 

of singers. 
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, 
875 Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious 

music. 
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed 

silent to listen. t 

Plaintive at first were the tones and sad; then soaring to 

madness 
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied 

Bacchantes. 
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation; 
8 so Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in 

derision. 
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops 
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the 

branches. 
With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with 

emotion, 
Slowly they entered the Tdche, where it flows through the 

green Opelousas, 
885 And through the amber air, above the crest of the wood- 
land. 
Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring 

dwelling; — 
Sounds of a horn they heard, and the distant lowing of cattle. 



Evangeline 233 

III 

Near to the bank of the river, o'ershadowed by oaks, from 

whose branches 
Garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic mistletoe flaunted, 
Such as the Druids cut down with golden hatchets at Yule- soo 

tide, 
Stood, secluded and still, the house of the herdsman. A 

garden 
Girded it round about with a belt of luxuriant blossoms, 
Filling the air with fragrance. The house itself was of 

timbers 
Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully fitted together. 
Large and low was the roof; and on slender columns sup- 895 

ported, 
Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and spacious veranda, 
Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, extended around it. 
At each end of the house, amid the flowers of the garden, 
Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's perpetual symbol. 
Scenes of endless wooing, and endless contentions of rivals. 900 
Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of shadow and 

sunshine 
Ran near the tops of the trees; but the house itself was in 

shadow, 
And from its chimney-top, ascending and slowly expanding 
Into the evening air, a thin blue column of smoke rose. 
In the rear of the house, from the garden gate, ran a pathway 905 
Through the great groves of oak to the skirts of the limitless 

prairie, 
Into whose sea of flowers the sun was slowly descending. 
Full in his track of light, like ships with shadowy canvas 
Hanging loose from their spars in a motionless calm in the 

tropics. 
Stood a cluster of trees, with tangled cordage of grape-vines. 910 

Just where the woodlands met the flowery surf of the 
prairie. 



234 American Literary Readings 

Mounted upon his horse, with Spanish saddle and stirrups, 
Sat a herdsman, arrayed in gaiters and doublet of deer-skin. 
Broad and brown was the face that from luider the Spanish 

sombrero 
)i5 Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the lordly look of its 

master. 
Round about him were numberless herds of kine that were 

grazing 
Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the vapory freshness 
That uprose from the river, and spread itself over the land- 
scape. 
Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, and expanding 
)2o Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, that resounded 
Wildly and sweet and far, through the still damp air of the 

evening. 
Suddenly out of the grass the long white horns of the cattle 
Rose like flakes of foam on the adverse currents of ocean. 
Silent a moment they gazed, then bellowing rushed o'er the 

prairie, 
925 And the whole mass became a cloud, a shade in the distance. 
Then, as the herdsman turned to the house, through the gate 

of the garden 
Saw he the forms of the priest and the maiden advancing to 

meet him. 
Suddenly down from his horse he sprang in amazement, and 

forward 
Rushed with extended arms and exclamations of wonder; 
930 When they beheld his face, they recognized Basil the Black- 
smith. 
Hearty his welcome was, as he led his guests to the garden. 
There in an arbor of roses with endless question and 

answer 
Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed their friendly 

embraces. 
Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting silent and 

thoughtful. 



Evangeline 235 

Thoughtful, for Gabriel came not; and now dark doubts and 935 

misgivings 
Stole o'er the maiden's heart; and Basil, somewhat embar- 
rassed. 
Broke the silence and said: "If you came by the Atcha- 

falaya, 
How have you nowhere encountered my Gabriel's boat on the 

bayous?" 
Over Evangeline's face at the words of Basil a shade passed. 
Tears came into her eyes, and she said, with a tremulous 940 

accent : — 
"Gone? is Gabriel gone?" and, concealing her face on his 

shoulder. 
All her o'erburdened heart gave way, and she wept and 

lamented. 
Then the good Basil said, — and his voice grew blithe as he 

said it, — 
"Be of good cheer, my child; it is only to-day he departed. 
Foolish boy! he has left me alone with my herds and my 9^5 

horses. 
Moody and restless grown, and tried and troubled, his 

spirit 
Could no longer endure the calm of this quiet existence. 
Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sorrowful ever. 
Ever silent, or speaking only of thee and his troubles. 
He at length had become so tedious to men and to maidens, 950 
Tedious even to me, that at length I bethought me, and sent 

him 
Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules with the 

Spaniards. 
Thence he will follow the Indian trails to the Ozark Moun- 
tains, 
Hunting for furs in the forests, on rivers trapping the beaver. 
Therefore be of good cheer; we will follow the fugitive lover; 955 
He is not far on his way, and the Fates and the streams are 

against him. 



236 American Literary Readings 

Up and away to-morrow, and through the red dew of the 

morning 
We will follow him fast, and bring him back to his prison." 

Then glad voices were heard, and up from the banks of the 

river, 
900 Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came Michael the 

fiddler. 
Long under Basil's roof had he lived like a god on Olympus, 
Having no other care than dispensing music to mortals. 
Far renowned was he for his silver locks and his fiddle. 
"Long live Michael," they cried, "our brave Acadian 

minstrel ! ' ' 
9 65 As they bore him aloft in triumphal procession; and straight- 
way 
Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, greeting the old 

man 
Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, while Basil, 

enraptured, 
Hailed with hilarious joy his old companions and gossips. 
Laughing loud and long, and embracing mothers and 

daughters. 

9 70 Much they marvelled to see the wealth of the ci-devant 

blacksmith, 
All his domains and his herds, and his patriarchal demeanor; 
Much they marvelled to hear his tales of the soil and the 

climate. 
And of the prairies, whose numberless herds were his who 

would take them; 
Each one thought in his heart, that he, too, would go and 

do likewise. 
975 Thus they ascended the steps, and, crossing the airy veranda. 
Entered the hall of the house, where already the supper of 

Basil 
Waited his late return ; and they rested and feasted together. 



Evangeline 237 

Over the joyous feast the sudden darkness descended. 
All was silent without, and, illuming the landscape with 

silver. 
Fair rose the dewy moon and the myriad stars; but within gso 

doors. 
Brighter than these, shone the faces of friends in the glimmer- 
ing lamplight. 
Then from his station aloft, at the head of the table, the 

herdsman 
Poured forth his heart and his wine together in endless 

profusion. 
Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet Natchitoches 

tobacco, 
Thus he spake to his guests, who listened, and smiled as 935 

they listened: — 
"Welcome once more, my friends, who so long have been 

friendless and homeless, 
Welcome once more to a home, that is better perchance than 

the old one! 
Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers; 
Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer. 
Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the soil, as a keel 990 

through the water. 
All the year round the orange-groves are in blossom; and 

grass grows 
More in a single night than a whole Canadian summer. 
Here, too, numberless herds run wild and unclaimed in the 

prairies ; 
Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, and forests of 

timber 
With a few blows of the axe are hewn and framed into 995 

houses. 
After your houses are built, and your fields are yellow with 

harvests. 
No King George of England shall drive you away from 

your homesteads, 



238 American Literary Readings 

Burning your dwellings and bams, and stealing your farms 

and your cattle." 
Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful cloud from his 

nostrils, 
1000 And his huge, brawny hand came thundering down on the 

table. 
So that the guests all started; and Father Felician, astounded. 
Suddenly paused, with a pinch of snuff half-way to his 

nostrils. 
But the brave Basil resumed, and his words were milder 

and gayer: — 
"Only beware of the fever, my friends, beware of the fever! 
1005 For it is not like that of our cold Acadian climate. 

Cured by wearing a spider hung round one's neck in a 

nutshell ! ' ' 
Then there were voices heard at the door, and footsteps 

approaching v 

Sounded upon the stairs and the floor of the breezy veranda. 
It was the neighboring Creoles and small Acadian planters, 
1010 Who had been summoned all to the house of Basil the 

Herdsman. 
Merry the meeting was of ancient comrades and neighbors: 
Friend clasped friend in his arms ; and they who before were 

as strangers, 
Meeting in exile, became straightway as friends to each 

other, 
Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country- together. 
1015 But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding 
From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, 
Broke up all further speech. Away, like children deUghted, 
All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the 

maddening 
Whirl of the dizzy dance, as it swept and swayed to the 

music, 
1020 Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush of fluttering 

garments. 



Evangeline 239 

Meanwhile, apart, at the head of the hall, the priest and 

the herdsman 
Sat, conversing together of past and present and future; 
While Evangeline stood like one entranced, for within her 
Olden memories rose, and loud in the midst of the music 
Heard she the sound of the sea, and an irrepressible sadness 1025 
Came o'er her heart, and unseen she stole forth into the 

garden. 
Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the 

forest, 
Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the 

river 
Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam 

of the moonlight. 
Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious 1030 

spirit. 
Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the 

garden 
Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and 

confessions 
Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian. 
Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows 

and night-dews, 
Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical 1035 

moonlight 
Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings, 
As, through the garden gate, and beneath the brown shade 

of the oak-trees. 
Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless 

prairie. 
Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies 
Gleamed and floated away in mingled and inflnite numbers. 1040 
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the 

heavens. 
Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel and 

worship, 



240 American Literary Readings 

Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that 

temple, 
As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, 

"Upharsin." 
1045 And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the fire- 
flies, 
Wandered alone, and she cried: "O Gabriel! O my 

beloved ! 
Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee? 
Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach 

me? 
Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie! 
1050 Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands 

around me! 
Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor. 
Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in thy 

slumbers ! 
When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about 

thee?" 
Loud and sudden and near the notes of a whippoorwill 

sounded 
1055 Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring 

thickets. 
Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into 

silence. 
"Patience!" whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of 

darkness ; 
And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, "To- 
morrow ! ' ' 

Bright rose the sun next day; and all the flowers of the 
garden 
1060 Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his 
tresses 
With the delicious, balm that they bore in their vases of 
crystal. 



Evangeline 241 

"Farewell!" said the priest, as he stood at the shadowy 

threshold ; 
"See that you bring us the Prodigal Son from his fasting 

and famine, 
And, too, the Foolish Virgin, who slept when the bridegroom 

was coming." 
"Farewell!" answered the maiden, and, smiling, with Basil iocs 

descended 
Down to the river's brink, where the boatmen already were 

waiting. 
Thus beginning their journey with morning, and sunshine, 

and gladness. 
Swiftly they followed the flight of him who was speeding 

before them. 
Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf over the desert. 
Not that day, nor the next, nor yet the day that succeeded, 1070 
Found they trace of his course, in lake or forest or river. 
Nor, after many days, had they found him ; but vague and 

uncertain 
Rimiors alone were their guides through a wild and desolate 

country; 
Till, at the little inn of the Spanish town of Adayes, 
Weary and worn, they alighted, and learned from the garru- 1075 

lous landlord. 
That on the day before, with horses and guides and com- 
panions, 
Gabriel left the village, and took the road of the prairies. 

IV 

Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the moun- 
tains 

Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous sum- 
mits. 

Down from their jagged, deep ravines, where the gorge, like loso 
a gateway. 

Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon, 



242 American Literary Readings 

Westward the Oregon flows and the Walleway and Owyhee. 
Eastward, with devious course, among the Wind-river 

Mountains, 
Through the Sweetwater Valley precipitate leaps the 

Nebraska; 
1085 And to the south, from Fontaine-qui-bout and the Spanish 

sierras. 
Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by the wind of the 

desert, 
Ntmiberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, descend to the 

ocean, 
Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and solemn vi- 
brations. 
Spreading between these streams are the wondrous, beautiful 

prairies, 
1090 Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow and sunshine, 
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and purple amorphas. 
Over them wander the buffalo herds, and the elk and the 

roebuck ; 
Over them wander the wolves, and herds of riderless horses ; 
Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with 

travel ; 
1095 Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children. 
Staining the desert with blood ; and above their terrible war- 
trails 
Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, 
Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, 
By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. 
1100 Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage 

marauders; 
Here and there rise groves from the margin of swift-running 

rivers ; 
And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the 

desert, 
Creeps down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the 

brook-side. 



"^^ Evangeline 243 

And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven, 
Like the protecting hand of God inverted above them. 1105 

Into this wonderM land, at the base of the Ozark 

Mountains, 
Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and trappers behind 

him. 
Day after day, with their Indian guides, the maiden and 

Basil 
Followed his flying steps, and thought each day to o'ertake 

him. 
Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, the smoke of his 1110 

camp-fire 
Rise in the morning air from the distant plain; but at 

nightfall, 
When they had reached the place, they found only embers 

and ashes. 
And, though their hearts were sad at times and their bodies 

were weary, 
Hope still gtdded them on, as the magic Fata Morgana 
Showed them her lakes of light, that retreated and vanished uu 

before them. 

Once, as they sat by their evening fire, there silently 

entered 
Into the little camp an Indian woman, whose features 
Wore deep traces of sorrow, and patience as great as her 

sorrow. 
She was a Shawnee woman returning home to her people, 
From the far-off hunting-grounds of the cruel Camanches, 1120 
Where her Canadian husband, a Coureiu"-des-Bois, had been 

murdered. 
Touched were their hearts at her story, and warmest and 

friendliest welcome 
Gave they, with words of cheer, and she sat and feasted 

among them 



244 American Literary Readings 

On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked on the * 
embers. 
1125 But when their meal was done, and Basil and all his com- 
panions, 

Worn with the long day's march and the chase of the deer 
and the bison, 

Stretched themselves on the ground, and slept where the 
quivering fire-light 

Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their forms wrapped 
up in their blankets. 

Then at the door of Evangeline's tent she sat and repeated 
1130 Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm of her Indian 
accent, 

All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, and pains, and 
reverses. 

Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to know that another 

Hapless heart like her own had loved and had been dis- 
appointed. 

Moved to the depths of her soul by pity and woman's com- 
passion, 
1135 Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who had suffered was near 
her. 

She in turn related her love and all its disasters. 

Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and when she had ended 

Still was mute; but at length, as if a mysterious horror 

Passed through her brain, she spake, and repeated the tale 
of the Mowis; 
1140 Mowis, the bridegroom of snow, who won and wedded a 
maiden. 

But, when the morning came, arose and passed from the 
wigwam. 

Fading and melting away and dissolving into the sunshine, 

Till she beheld him no more, though she followed far into the 
forest. 

Then, in those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird 
incantation, 



Evangeline 245 

Told she the tale of the fair Lilinau, who was wooed by a lus 

phantom, 
That, through the pines o'er her father's lodge, in the hush 

of the twilight, 
Breathed like the evening wind, and whispered love to the 

maiden, 
Till she followed his green and waving plirnie through the 

forest, 
Never more to retiim, nor was seen again by her people. 
Silent with wonder and strange surprise, EvangeHne Hstened nso 
To the soft flow of her magical words, till the region around 

her 
Seemed like enchanted groimd, and her swarthy guest the 

enchantress. 
Slowly over the tops of the Ozark Mountains the moon 

rose. 
Lighting the little tent, and with a mysterious splendor 
Touching the sombre leaves, and embracing and filling the 1155 

woodland. 
With a delicious sound the brook rushed by, and the branches 
Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely audible whispers. 
Filled with the thoughts of love was Evangeline's heart, but 

a secret, 
Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite terror, 
As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the nest of the iieo 

swallow. 
It was no earthly fear. A breath from the region of spirits 
Seemed to float in the air of night ; and she felt for a moment 
That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was pursuing a phantom. 
With this thought she slept, and the fear and the phantom 

had vanished. 

Early upon the morrow the march was resimied; and the nes 
Shawnee 
Said, as they journeyed along: "On the western slope of 
these mountains 



246 American Literary Readings 

Dwells in his little village the Black Robe chief of the 

Mission. 
Much he teaches the people, and tells them of Mary and 

Jesus; 
Loud laugh their hearts with joy, and weep with pain, as they 

hear him." 
1170 Then, with a sudden and secret emotion, Evangeline 

answered : 
"Let us go to the Mission, for there good tidings await us!" 
Thither they turned their steeds; and behind a spur of the 

mountains, 
Just as the sun went down, they heard a miuTnur of 

voices. 
And in a meadow green and broad, by the bank of a river, 
1175 Saw the tents of the Christians, the tents of the Jesuit 

Mission. 
Under a towering oak, that stood in the midst of the village. 
Knelt the Black Robe chief with his children. A crucifix 

fastened 
High on the trunk of the tree, and overshadowed by grape- 
vines. 
Looked with its agonized face on the multitude kneeling 

beneath it. 
1180 This was their rural chapel. Aloft, through the intricate 

arches 
Of its aerial roof, arose the chant of their vespers. 
Mingling its notes with the soft susurrus and sighs of the 

branches. 
Silent, with heads uncovered, the travellers, nearer approach- 
ing, 
Knelt on the swarded floor, and joined in the evening 

devotions. 
1185 But when the service was done, and the benediction had 

fallen 
Forth from the hands of the priest, like seed from the hands 

of the sower, 



Evangeline 247 

Slowly the reverend man advanced to the strangers, and 

bade them 
Welcome ; and when they replied, he smiled with benignant 

expression, 
Hearing the homelike sounds of his mother-tongue in the 

forest. 
And with words of kindness conducted them into his wig- 1190 

wam. 
There upon mats and skins they reposed, and on cakes of 

the maize-ear 
Feasted, and slaked their thirst from the water-goiird of the 

teacher. 
Soon was their story told; and the priest with solemnity 

answered : — 
"Not six suns have risen and set since Gabriel, seated 
On this mat by my side, where now the maiden reposes, 1195 
Told me this same sad tale; then arose and continued his 

journey!" 
Soft was the voice of the priest, and he spake with an accent 

of kindness; 
But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as in winter the 

snow-flakes 
Fall into some lone nest from which the birds have departed. 

"Far to the north he has gone," continued the priest; "but 1200 
in autumn, 

When the chase is done, will return again to the Mission." 

Then Evangeline said, and her voice was meek and sub- 
missive, 

"Let me remain with thee, for my soul is sad and afflicted." 

So seemed it wise and well unto all; and betimes on the 
morrow, 

Mounting his Mexican steed, with his Indian guides and 1205 
companions. 

Homeward Basil returned, and Evangeline stayed at the 
Mission. 



248 American Literary Readings 

Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded each other, — 
Days and weeks and months; and the fields of maize that 

were springing 
Green from the ground when a stranger she came, now 
. • waving above her, 
1210 Lifted their slender shafts, with leaves interlacing, and 

forming 
Cloisters for mendicant crows and granaries pillaged by 

squirrels. 
Then in the golden weather the maize was husked, and the 

maidens 
Blushed at each blood-red ear, for that betokened a lover. 
But at the crooked laughed, and called it a thief in the corn- 
field. 
1215 Even the blood-red ear to Evangeline brought iK)t her lover. 
"Patience!" the priest would say; "have faith, and thy 

\ prayer will be answered! 
Look at this delicate plant that lifts its head from the 

meadow. 
See how its leaves all point to the north, as true as the 

magnet ; 
This is the compass-flower, that the finger of God has 

suspended 
1220 Here on its fragile stalk, to direct the traveller's journey 
Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste of the desert. 
Such in the soul of man is faith. The blossoms of passion. 
Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and fuller of 

fragrance. 
But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and their odor is 

deadly. 
1225 Only this humble plant can guide us here, and hereafter 
Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are wet with the dews 

of nepenthe." 

So came the autumn, and passed, and the winter, yet 
Gabriel came not; 



Evangeline 249 

Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes of the robin 

and blue-bird 
Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet Gabriel came not. 
But on the breath of the summer winds a rumor was wafted 1230 
Sweeter than song of bird, or hue or odor of blossom. 
Far to the north and east, it said, in the Michigan forests, 
Gabriel had his lodge by the banks of the Saginaw River. 
And, with returning guides, that sought the lakes of St. 

Lawrence, 
Saying a sad farewell, Evangeline went from the Mission. 123s 
When over weary ways, by long and perilous marches, 
Shie had attained at length the depths of the Michigan forests, 
Found she the hunter's lodge deserted and fallen to ruin! 

Thus did the long, sad years glide on, and in seasons and 

places 
Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden; — 1240 
Now in the tents of grace of the meek Moravian Missions, 
Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army, 
Now in secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities. 
Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered. 
Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long 1245 

journey ; 
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended. 
Each succeeding year stole something away from her beauty. 
Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the 

shadow. 
Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er 

her forehead. 
Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon, 1250 
As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning. 

V 

In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's 

waters. 
Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, 



250 American Literary Readings 

Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he 

founded. 
1255 There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of 

beauty, 
And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the 

forest. 
As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they 

molested. 

There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed, an exile, 
Finding among the children of Penn a home and a country. 
1260 There old Rene Leblanc had died; and when he departed, 
Saw at his side only one of all his hundred descendants. 
Something at least there was in the friendly streets of the 

city. 
Something that spake to her heart, and made her no longer 

a stranger; 
And her ear was pleased with the Thee and Thou of the 

Quakers, 
1265 For it recalled the past, the old Acadian country, 

Where all men were equal, and all were brothers and sisters. 
So, when the fruitless search, the disappointed endeavor, 
Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, uncomplaining. 
Thither, as leaves to the light, were tmned her thoughts and 

her footsteps. 
1270 As from a mountain's top the rainy mists of the morning 
Roll away, and afar we behold the landscape below us. 
Sun-illumined, with shining rivers and cities and hamlets, 
So fell the mists from her mind, and she saw the world far 

below her, 
Dark no longer, but all illumined with love ; and the pathway 
1275 Which she had climbed so far, l3ang smooth and fair in the 

distance. 
Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image. 
Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld 

him. 



Evangeline 251 

Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and 

absence. 
Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was not. 
Over him years had no power; he was not changed, but 1280 

transfigiu-ed ; 
He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and not 

absent; 
Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others, 
This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her. 
So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices. 
Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with 1285 

aroma. 
Other hope had she none, nor wish in Hfe, but to follow 
Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour, 
Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy ; frequenting 
Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of the city. 
Where distress and want concealed themselves from the 1290 

simlight. 
Where disease and sorrow in garrets languished neglected. 
Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watch- 
man repeated 
Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city, 
High at some lonely window he saw the light of her taper. 
Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the 1295 

suburbs 
Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the 

market, 
Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its 

watchings. 

Then it came to pass that a pestilence fell on the city, 
Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by flocks of wild 

pigeons. 
Darkening the sim in their flight, with naught in their craws 1300 

but an acorn. 
And, as the tides of the sea arise in the month of September, 



252 American Literary Readings 

Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads to a lake in the 

meadow, 
So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its natiiral margin, 
Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream of existence. 
1305 Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the 

oppressor; 
But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger; — 
Only, alas ! the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants. 
Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless. 
Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst of meadows and 

woodlands; — 
1310 Now the city surrounds it; but still, with its gateway and 

wicket 
Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble walls seem to echo 
Softly the words of the Lord: "The poor ye always have 

with you." 
Thither, by night and by day, came the Sister of Mercy. 

The dying 
Looked up into her face, and thought, indeed, to behold 

there 
1315 Gleams of celestial light encircle her forehead with splendor. 
Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of saints and 

apostles. 
Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen at a distance. 
Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the city celestial. 
Into whose shining gates ere long their spirits would enter. 

1320 Thus, on a Sabbath mom, through the streets, deserted 
and silent, 
Wending her quiet way, she entered the door of the alms- 
house. 
Sweet on the summer air was the odor of flowers in the 
garden ; 
■ And she paused on her way to gather the fairest among them, 
That the dying once more might rejoice in their fragrance 
and beauty. 



Evangeline 253 

Then, as she mounted the stairs to the corridors, cooled by 1325 

the east wind, 
Distant and soft on her ear fell the chimes from the belfry of 

Christ Church, 
While, intermingled with these, across the meadows were 

wafted 
Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the Swedes in their 

church at Wicaco. 
Soft as descending wings fell the calm of the hour on her 

spirit : 
Something within her said, "At length thy trials are ended" ; 1330 
And, with light in her looks, she entered the chambers of 

sickness. 
Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, careful attendants, 
Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching brow, and in 

silence 
Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and concealing their 

faces, 
Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts of snow by the 1335 

road-side. 
Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, 
Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her 

presence 
Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a 

prison. 
And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler, 
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it for ever. 1340 
Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night-time; 
Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers. 

Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder, 
Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder 
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped 1345 

from her fingers, 
And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the 

morning. 



254 American Literary Readings 

Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible 
anguish, 

That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows. 

On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man. 
1350 Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his 
temples; 

But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment 

Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood ; 

So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying. 

Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the fever, 
1355 As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its 
portals. 

That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over. 

Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted 

Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the 
darkness. 

Darkness of slumber and death, for ever sinking and sinking. 
13 CO Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverbera- 
tions. 

Heard he that cry of pain, and through the hush that 
succeeded 

Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like, 

"Gabriel! O my beloved!" and died away into silence. 

Then he beheld, in a dream, once more the home of his child- 
hood ; 
1365 Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers among them, 

Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, walking under 
their shadow. 

As in the days of her youth, Evangeline rose in his vision. 

Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he lifted his eyelids, 

Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline knelt by his 
bedside. 
1370 Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for the accents 
unuttered 

Died on his lips, and their motion revealed what his tongue 
would have spoken. 



Evangeline 255 

Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, kneeling beside 

him, 
Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on her bosom. 
Sweet was the light of his eyes; but it suddenly sank into 

darkness, 
As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement. 1375 

All was ended now, the hope, and the fear, and the sorrow, 
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing. 
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience! 
And, as she pressed once more the lifeless head to her bosom, 
Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, "Father, I thank uso 
thee!" 



Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its 

shadow. 
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping. 
Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard, 
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed. 
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them. 
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and 

for ever. 
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy, 
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from 

their labors. 
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their 



journey 



Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its 1390 
branches 
Dwells another race, with other customs and language. 
Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic 
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile 
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom. 
In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy; 1395 



256 American Literary Readings 

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of 

homespun, 
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story, 
While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring 

ocean 
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the 

forest. 

A PSALM OF LIFE 

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE 
PSALMIST 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

"Life is but an empty dream ! " 
For the soul is dead that slumbers. 

And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 

And the grave is not its goal ; 
" Dust thou art, to dust returnest," 

Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjojTuent, and not sorrow, 
I Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
1 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world's broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of Life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 
• Be a hero in the strife ! 



Hymn to the Night 257 



Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
Act, — act in the living Present! 

Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our Hves sublime," 

And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 
Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 
With a heart for any fate ; 

Still achieving, still pursuing. 
Learn to labor and to wait. 



HYMN TO THE NIGHT 

'AdnadiT], rpiXA.idro's 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night 
Sweep through her marble halls ! 

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light 
From the celestial walls ! 

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 

Stoop o'er me from above; 
The calm, majestic presence of the Night, 

As of the one I love. 

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight. 
The manifold, soft chimes. 



258 American Literary Readings 

That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, 
Like some old poet's rhymes. 

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 

My spirit drank repose; 
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, — 

From those deep cisterns flows. 

O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear 

What man has borne before ! 
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, 

And they complain no more. 

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! 

Descend with broad- winged flight, 
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair. 

The best-beloved Night! 



MAIDENHOOD 

Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes 
In whose orbs a shadow lies 
Like the dusk in evening skies ! 

Thou whose locks outshine the sun 
Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
As the braided streamlets run ! 

Standing, with reluctant feet. 
Where the brook and river meet. 
Womanhood and childhood fleet ! 

Gazing, with a timid glance, 
On the brooklet's swift advance. 
On the river's broad expanse ! 



Maidenhood 259 

Deep and still, that gliding stream 
Beautiful to thee must seem, 
As the river of a dream. 

Then why pause with indecision, 
When bright angels in thy vision 
Beckon thee to fields Elysian? 

Seest thou shadows sailing by, 
As the dove, with startled eye, 
Sees the falcon's shadow fly? 

Hearest thou voices on the shore, 
That our ears perceive no more, 
Deafened by the cataract's roar? 

O thou child of many prayers ! 

Life hath quicksands, — Life hath snares! 

Care and age come unawares! 

Like the swell of some sweet tune, 
Morning rises into noon. 
May glides onward into June. 

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered 
Birds and blossoms many -numbered ; — 
Age, that bough with snows encumbered. 

Gather, then, each flower that grows, 
When the yoimg heart overflows. 
To embalm that tent of snows. 

Bear a lily in thy hand; 

Gates of brass cannot withstand 

One touch of that magic wand. 



26o American Literary Readings 

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth. 
In thy heart the dew of youth, 
On thy hps the smile of truth. 

O, that dew, Hke balm, shall steal 
Into wounds that cannot heal. 
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal; 

And that smile, like sunshine, dart 
Into many a sunless heart. 
For a smile of God thou art. 



EXCELSIOR 

The shades of night were falling fast. 
As through an Alpine village passed 
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 
A banner with the strange device. 
Excelsior ! 

His brow was sad ; his eye beneath, 
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, 
And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue, 
Excelsior ! 



In happy homes he saw the Hght 
Of household fires gleam warm and bright; 
Above, the spectral glaciers shone. 
And from his lips escaped a groan. 
Excelsior ! 



Excelsior 261 

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said; 
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!" 
And loud that clarion voice replied, 
Excelsior ! 

"0 stay," the maiden said, "and rest 
Thy weary head upon this breast!" 
A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 
But still he answered, with a sigh. 
Excelsior ! 

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! 
Beware the awful avalanche!" 
This was the peasant's last Good-night; 
A voice replied, far up the height, 
Excelsior ! 

At break of day, as heavenward 
The pious monks of Saint Bernard 
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 
A voice cried through the startled air, 
Excelsior ! 

A traveller, by the faithful hound, 
Half buried in the snow was found. 
Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the strange device, 
Excelsior ! 

There in the twilight cold and gray, 
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 
And from the sky, serene and far, 
A voice fell, like a falling star, 
Excelsior ! 



262 American Literary Readings 

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 

It was the schooner Hesperus, 

That sailed the wintry sea ; 
And the skipper had taken his Httle daughter, 

To bear him company. 

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, 
Her cheeks like the dawn of day. 

And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, 
That ope in the month of May. 

The skipper he stood beside the helm. 

His pipe was in his mouth, 
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow 

The smoke now west, now south. 

Then up and spake an old sailor, 
Had sailed the Spanish Main, 
i "I pray thee, put into yonder port. 

For I fear a hurricane. 

"Last night, the moon had a golden ring. 

And to-night no moon we see!" 
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, 
) And a scornful laugh laughed he. 

Colder and louder blew the wind, 

A gale from the northeast; 
The snow fell hissing in the brine, 

And the billows frothed like yeast. 

6 Down came the storm, and smote amain 

The vessel in its strength; 
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, 
Then leaped her cable's length. 



The Wreck of the Hesperus 263 

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter, 
And do not tremble so; i 

For I can weather the roughest gale 
That ever wind did blow." 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat 

Against the stinging blast; 
He cut a rope from a broken spar, ; 

And bound her to the mast. 

"0 father! I hear the church-bells ring, 

O say, what may it be?" 
" 'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"— 

And he steered for the open sea. 

" O father ! I hear the sound of guns, 

O say, what may it be?" 
"Some ship in distress, that cannot Uve 

In such an angry sea!" 

" O father ! I see a gleaming light, 

O say, what may it be?" 
But the father answered never a word, 

A frozen corpse was he. 

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 

With his face turned to the skies. 
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow 

On his fixed and glassy eyes. 

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed 

That saved she might be; 
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, 

On the Lake of Galilee. 

And fast through the midnight dark and drear. 
Through the whistling sleet and snow. 



264 American Literary Readings 

Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept 
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe. 

And ever the fitful gusts between, 

A sound came from the land ; 
It was the sound of the trampling surf 

On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. 

The breakers were right beneath her bows, 

She drifted a dreary wreck, 
And a whooping billow swept the crew 

Like icicles from her deck. 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves 

Looked soft as carded wool, 
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side 

Like the horns of an angry bull. 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 
With the masts went by the board ; 

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank. 
Ho! hoi the breakers roared! 

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 

A fisherman stood aghast, 
To see the form of a maiden fair, 

Lashed close to a drifting mast. 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 

The salt tears in her eyes; 
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea- weed, 

On the billows fall and rise. 

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 

In the midnight and the snow ! 
Christ save us all from a death like this 

On the reef of Norman's Woe ! 



The Arrow and the Song 265 

THE ARROW AND THE SONG 

I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not foUow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air. 
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For who has sight so keen and strong, 
That it can follow the flight of song? 

Long, long afterward, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend. 



SONNET 

DiVINA COMMEDIA 

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet 
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
Far off the noises of the world retreat ; 
The loud vociferations of the street 
Become an undistinguishable roar. 

So, as I enter here from day to day, 

And leave my biurden at this minster gate. 
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, 

The tumult of the time disconsolate 
To inarticulate miumurs dies away, 
While the eternal ages watch and wait. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

1807-1892 

John Greenleaf Whittier has been called "The Poet 
Laureate of New England," "The Quaker Poet," "The 
Burns of America." Any one of these titles may be aptly 
applied to him, but perhaps the first is most suggestive of 
his real service to American literature. He is called the 
Bums of America because, like the Scotch poet, he was 
born on a farm and reared amid the usual isolation and 
hardships incident to farm life in his day, and because, 
like Bums, he wrote most successfully about the things 
immediately connected with this rural life into which he 
was bom. But he lacked the Scotch singer's alertness for 
things of sense, his fiery passion, his keen ear for music, and 
hence in lyric power he falls far below the peasant bard. 
He is called the Quaker poet because he voiced the deepest 
religious moods of that particular sect. He was born a 
Quaker, and he clung to this quiet, self-denying form of 
religion throughout his life. He inherited from his ances- 
tors that strict conscience and deeply religious nature 
which he poured forth in his hymns and moral odes. 
In fact, his sense for morality was so strong that it not 
infrequently overshadowed and obscured what little instinct 
for pure art he possessed. But above all he was, and is 
still, the poet laureate of New England life. He has taken 
the local legends and ballads and enshrined them in perma- 
nent art forms. He has painted the most perfect pictures 
of the rigid New England climate, and of the exquisite New 
England rural landscape, its hills and valleys, its fields and 
flowers, its coasts and rivers. He has given the most accu- 
rate portraits of the native New England population in 
all the simplicity, purity, and charm of that unsophisticated 
class of which he was himself a member. 

Whittier was bom December 17, 1807, near East Haver- 
hill, a small country village in northeast Massachusetts. 
He has given us in "Snow-Bound" a broad, sweeping winter 
picture of his birthplace, the old homestead built by his 
early Puritan ancestor Thomas Whittier; and a minutely 

[266] 




JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



John Greenleaf Whittier 267 

drawn summer picture of the same spot in "Telling the 
Bees" and other personal poems. All the members of the 
family are mentioned and faithfully drawn in "Snow- 
Bound" — the father and mother, John Whittier and Abigail 
Haney, Uncle Moses Whittier, Aunt Mercy Hussey, the 
brother, Matthew Franklin Whittier, and the two sisters 
Mary and Elizabeth. Besides these, one of the village 
schoolmasters, George Haskell, and Miss Harriet Liver- 
more, that " half -welcome guest," are also included in the 
family circle of the particular week when the family were 
snowbound. 

Whittier's boyhood and early surroundings are inter- 
esting because they show what can come out of many a 
country home where there are energy and perseverance 
and ambition in the hearts of boys and girls similarly situ- 
ated. The school advantages were meager. Only a few 
months in the year were the children privileged to attend 
the district school. There were few books in the homes, 
but the few in the Whittier household were mostly well- 
chosen religious books. John Greenleaf made the best of 
his opportunities for an education, however, and he learned 
much that was valuable to him, both in school and on the 
farm. He showed at an early age his propensity for poetry, 
making on his slate rimes on the people he knew and the 
books he read. One of his teachers, Joshua Coffin, later 
immortalized in the poem "To My Old Schoolmaster," 
one day read to the Whittier family some of Burns's songs. 
The lad was enchanted. So eager was he for more of this 
delightful Scotch verse that the teacher offered to leave the 
volume with him for a few days. He conned the hard 
Scotch dialect until he could read it with ease, and from 
that time on he felt that he too wanted to become a poet. 
In a later poem on Burns he acknowledges his debt. 

" New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 
New glory over Woman; 
And daily Hfe and duty seemed 
No longer poor and common." 

After school time the boy was put to .work at the hard 
tasks of the farm, but he was not particularly strong, and 
once he injured himself, so that thereafter he was not 
expected to undertake the very heaviest tasks. He took 
up the trade of making shoes, and this enabled him a little 



268 American Literary Readings 

later on to earn part of his expenses for a term in the Haver- 
hill Academy. He had been writing more or less ambitious 
verse ever since the volume of Burns fell into his hands. 
His elder sister Mary thought some of his efforts worthy of 
being printed, and so, without her brother's knowledge, 
she sent one of them, "The Exile's Departure," to the 
Newbury Free Press, sl weekly journal of which the young 
William Lloyd Garrison, who afterwards became a famous 
leader of the abolitionists, was the editor. The verses were 
accepted, and when the young poet saw his composition in 
print in the poets' comer, he was so overcome with emotion 
that for some minutes he could not go on with the task of 
fence mending in which he was at the moment engaged. 
He admitted in later years that no keener pleasure ever came 
into his life. 

Fortunately for him the young editor of the Free Press 
sought him out, asked for more contributions, and urged 
his parents to send the boy off to the newly established 
Academy at Haverhill. The father objected, for he did not 
think there was much in education and literature so far as 
making an honest living was concerned ; but the good mother 
joined in the persuasions, and the boy was permitted to go 
to school provided he would earn his way. He went into 
Mr. Garrison's home, and by means of money earned in 
making slippers at twenty-five cents a pair, he paid the 
extra expense for his first term in the Academy. He spent 
one other term in this school, earning the money this time 
partly by teaching and partly by clerical work. And this 
was all the formal education he received. He never would 
have been the educated man he became, however, had he 
not been a great reader, and had he not kept up his studies 
practically all his life. Every one of the other prominent 
New England writers went to college, and had the advantage 
of travel in Europe, but Whittier never saw inside a college 
during his youth, and never quite managed to fulfill his 
desire for a trip to Europe. He lived and died in New 
England, rarely putting his foot outside his native section. 

It is needless to follow minutely the political and journal- 
istic career of Whittier. Sufhce it to say that early in life 
he attached himself to what was then an unpopular cause, — 
namely, the abolition of slavery, — and he devoted his best 
talents to this cause through thick and thin. He gave up 
his hope for political preferment by espousing this cause 



John Greenlaaf Whittier 269 

He believed it to be a righteous one, and he was doubtless 
happier in his poverty and political neglect than he could 
possibly have been as United States senator, an office to 
which he might well have aspired had he been willing to 
turn his back on the unpopular cause of abolition. He 
wrote many articles, published many anti-slavery poems, 
edited several journals, and did much real service for the 
cause by his shrewd political management and his untiring 
devotion to the mean and exacting drudgery of a movement 
like the one in which he had centered his whole being. 

During these years he was barely able to make a living; 
his wants were simple, however, and he did not care for 
wealth or preferment. He never married, and so he had 
but a small family burden in his care for his mother and 
younger sister, Elizabeth. He said that he was enabled 
to live in spite of the fact that practically all of the literary 
channels were closed to him on account of his attachment 
to an unpopular cause. Just prior to and after the Civil 
War, however, when the cause for which he had so long 
battled became popular and finally triumphed, he came 
into his own, and the very best literary magazines. were open 
to him. The Atlantic Monthly under the editorship of 
James Russell Lowell and James T. Field was particularly 
favorable to him, and he published many of his best poems 
in this magazine. His works became so popular after the 
publication of "Snow-Bound" in 1866 that he was enabled 
to live in comfort, though not in luxury, during the remainder 
of his life. He had given up his old homestead near East 
Haverhill many years before, and had moved to Amesbury, 
a town not many miles away, and here he spent the latter 
half of his life. Just about the time of his death, the old 
homestead near Haverhill was purchased and furnished 
over as nearly as possible in the style of the days of his youth, 
and it is now open to visitors from all over the country. 

''Vhittier's poetry may be discussed in these three groups: 
(i) his slavery and war-time poems, or "Voices of Freedom " ; 
(2) his New England poems, including his incomparable 
idyls, his reflective and religious poems, his songs of labor, 
his nature lyrics, and his personal poems; (3) his narrative 
verse, including the ballads, most of which are lit up with 
New England coloring. 

The slavery and war-time poems were the most cherished 
products of his pen before, during, and immediatelv after 



270 American Literary Readings 

the terrible war which finally settled the question of slavery. 
The best of these are "Ichabod," a bold piece of invective, 
written more in sorrow than in anger, on the occasion of the 
defection of Daniel Webster from the cause of abolition; 
"Barbara Frietchie," usually ranked as the best ballad of 
the Civil War, but a poem marred by an unjust reference 
to the great southern leader "Stonewall" Jackson; "Massa- 
chusetts to Virginia," a violent and powerful outburst against 
the fugitive slave law; and "Laus Deo," a magnificent paean 
of gratitude and praise upon the passage of the constitutional 
amendment forever abolishing slavery from our country. 

The second class of poems, the New England group, 
really gives Whittier a high rank among our American 
singers. The masterpiece among these is the idyl "Snow- 
Bound," the almost perfect picture of the New England 
rural home. This poem is fully analyzed in our text, and 
need not be further discussed here. Other familiar poems 
similar in style, but not approaching it in beauty or com- 
pleteness, are "Maud Muller," "Mabel Martin," "The 
Barefoot Boy," "My Playmate," "In School-Days," and 
the Prelude to "Among the Hills." The purely personal 
and occasional poems and the nature lyrics are too numerous 
to be mentioned except by bare examples, such as "The 
Poet and the Children," referring to Longfellow's seventy- 
fifth birthday celebration, "The Trailing Arbutus," "The 
Frost Spirit," "The Last Walk in Autumn." There are 
over five hundred closely printed double-columned pages 
in his collected works, and at least half of the volume belongs 
distinctly in what I have called the New England poems, 
and is the cream of Whittier's poetry. In fact, Whittier, 
like Milton in the days of the Commonwealth, was so bur- 
dened with a great political cause during all these early years 
of his life that he could not produce really great poetry. 
The poems written after middle age are by far the best 
products of his life, and the very highest work of his genius 
came after he was fifty-nine. 

In narrative verse, Whittier's first serious effort was to 
save the rich mine of legend and romance which he saw at 
his hand in the records of early New England history. His 
volume Legends of New England in Prose and Verse (183 1) 
is largely narrative in character. Another poem with an 
Indian hero, "Mogg Megone," Whittier later classed as a 
stiff, unnatural sort of poetical performance. The Tent on. 



John Greenleaf Whittier 271 

the Beach contains many poems, most of them narrative in 
character, and "Among the Hills" may be classed in this 
category. The number of ballads is large, including such 
favorites as "Barclay of Ury," "Skipper Ireson's Ride," 
"Telling the Bees," "Cobbler Keezar's Vision," "Amy 
Wentworth," and "King Solomon and the Ants." It .has 
been said that Whittier is our truest ballad writer^ not even 
excepting Longfellow. If not so swift in action nor so per- 
fect in imitative tone, Whittier's ballads are truer to locality 
and more thoroughly native than Longfellow's. 

Whittier died on September 7, 1892. Save Holmes, he 
was the last of the New England group of American 
poets to pass away. We have chosen to represent his work 
in this volume by his most perfect idyl, one ballad, one 
personal or reflective lyric, and one song-lyric. 

(The standard life of Whittier is that by Samuel T. Pickard, who 
has also written a delightful additional volume called Whittier Land. 
A good brief biography is that by George Rice Carpenter in the 
American Men of Letters Series.) 



SNOW-BOUND 

A WINTER IDYL 

"As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits 
which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light 
of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial 
Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the 
same." — Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy, Book I, chap. v. 

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky. 
Arrives the snow; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emerson 

The sun that brief December day- 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray. 

And, darkly circled, gave at noon 

A sadder light than waning moon, 
i Slow tracing down the thickening sky 

Its mute and ominous prophecy, 

A portent seeming less than threat. 

It sank from sight before it set. 

A chill no coat, however stout, 
) Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold. 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 
Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 

The coming of the snow-storm told. 
5 The wind blew east : we heard the roar 

[272] 



Snow -Bound 273 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rh3rthni our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows; 
Heard the horse whinnying for his com; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge sent. 

Unwarmed by any simset light 

The gray day darkened into night, 

A night made hoary with the swarm 

And whirl-dance of the bhnding storm, 

As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 

And ere the early bed-time came 

The white drift piled the window-frame. 

And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all night long the storm roared on : 
The morning broke without a sun; 
In tiny spherule traced with lines 
Of Nature's geometric signs, 
In starry flake, and pellicle. 
All day the hoary meteor fell ; 
And, when the second morning shone. 
We looked upon a world unknown. 



10 



2 74 American Literary Readings 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 

Or garden wall, or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road; 

The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 

The well-curb had a Chinese roof ; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof. 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 

Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 

Our father wasted : ' ' Boys, a path ! " 

Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 

Count such a summons less than joy?) 

Our buskins on our feet we drew; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 

We cut the solid whiteness through. 

And, where the drift was deepest, made 

A tunnel walled and overlaid 

With dazzling crystal: we had read 

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave. 

And to our o^vn his name we gave. 

With many a wish the luck were ours 

To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

We reached the bam with merry din, 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 

The old horse thrust his long head out, 



Snow-Bound 275 

And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore ** 

The loosening drift its breath before ; 

Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone, 

No church-bell lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude made more intense 

By dreary-voiced elements. 

The shrieking of the mindless wind. 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind. 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 

No welcome sound of toil or mirth 

Unbound the spell, and testified 

Of human life and thought outside. 

We minded that the sharpest ear 1 

The buried brooklet could not hear, ' 

The music of whose liquid lip 

Had been to us companionship, 

And, in our lonely life, had grown 

To have an almost human tone. 1 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 



276 American Literary Readings 

The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank. 
We piled, with care, our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 
Vv^hile radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed. 
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed ; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme: ''Under the tree, 
When fire outdoors hums merrily, 
There the witches are making tea." 



The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 



Snow -Bound 277 



Most fitting that un wanning light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about. 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 
The merrier up its roaring draught 
The great throat of the chimney laughed. 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet. 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow. 
The apples sputtered in a row. 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day. 
How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of life and love, to still live on! 
Ah, brother! only I and thou 
Are left of all that circle now, — 



278 American Literary Readings 

The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will, 
The voices of that hearth are still; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er. 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 
We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard-trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn ; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made. 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress- trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away. 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own! 

We sped the time with stories old. 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told. 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
"The Chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand. 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word: 



Snow -Bound 279 

"Does not the voice of reason cry, 

Claim the first right which Nature gave. 

From the red scourge of bondage fly, 
Nor deign to live a burdened slave! 

Our father rode again his ride 

On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 

Sat down again to moose and samp 

In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 

Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 

Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees; 

Again for him the moonlight shone 

On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 

Again he heard the violin play 

Which led the village dance away, 

And mingled in its merry whirl 

The grandam and the laughing girl. - 

Or, nearer home, our steps he led 

Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; 

Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 

Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 
The low green prairies of the sea. 

We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; 

The chowder on the sand-beach made, 

Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 

With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 

We heard the tales of witchcraft old. 

And dream and sign and marvel told 

To sleepy listeners as they lay 

Stretched idly on the salted hay, 

Adrift along the winding shores. 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 

The square sail of the gundalow, 

And idle lay the useless oars. 



28o American Literary Readings 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cochecho town, 
And how her own great-uncle bore 
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 
Recalling, in her fitting phrase. 
So rich and picturesque and free, 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways,) 
The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome to her home; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country side; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away. 
We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew. 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild-geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 

Then, haply, wdth a look more grave, 
And soberer tone, some tale she gave 
From painful Sewell's ancient tome, 
Beloved in every Quaker home. 
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, 
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint,^ 
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! — 



.Snow -Bound 281 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed. 

And cruel, hungry eyes piirsued 

His portly presence mad for food. 

With dark hints muttered under breath 29s 

Of casting lots for Hfe or death, 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 300 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

"Take, eat," he said, "and be content: 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 305 

To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our imcle, innocent of books. 

But rich in lore of fields and brooks, 

The ancient teachers never dumb 

Of Nature's unhoused lyceiim. 310 

In moons and tides and weather wise. 

He read the clouds as prophecies. 

And foul or fair could well divine, 

By many an occult hint and sign, 

Holding the cunning- warded keys 315 

To all the woodcraft mysteries; 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

Like Apollonius of old, 320 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man. 

Content to live where Ufe began; ' 3>6 



American Literary E^eadings 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 

The common features magnified, 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selbome's loving view, — 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got. 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told. 

Forgotten was the outside cold. 

The bitter wind unheeded blew. 

From ripening corn the pigeons flew. 

The partridge dnmimed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 

In fields with bean or clover gay. 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell; 

The muskrat plied the mason's trade. 

And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; 

And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 
And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate. 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness. 
And welcome whereso'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element. 
Whose presence seemed the sweet income 
And womanly atmosphere of home, — 
Called up her girlhood memories, 



Snow -Bound 283 



The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespim warp of circumstance 
A golden woof -thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dries so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman bom 
Who hath for such but thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister plied 
Her evening task the stand beside ; 
A full, rich nature, free to trust. 
Truthful and almost sternly just, 
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act. 
And make her generous thought a fact, 
Keeping with many a light disguise 
The secret of self-sacrifice. 
O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings! 

As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 
Against the household bosom lean, 



284 American Literary Readings 

Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
O, looking from some heavenly hill, 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river calms. 
Do those large eyes behold me stiU? 
With me one little year ago: — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to- seek. 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills 
The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss in all familiar things, 
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 



Snow -Bound 285 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star. 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 
Held at the fire his favored place. 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten- blinded cat, 
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat. 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Bom the wild Northern hills among. 
From whence his yeoman father wnmg 
By patient toil subsistence scant. 
Not competence and yet not want. 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerful, self-reliant way; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
To peddle wares from town to town; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach, 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
The moonlit skater's keen delight. 
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid. 
His winter task a pastime made. 



286 American Literary Readings 

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 

He tuned his merry violin, 

Or played the athlete in the bam, 

Or held the good dame's winding-yam, 

Or mirth-provoking versions told 

Of classic legends rare and old, 

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 

Had all the commonplace of home, 

And little seemed at best the odds 

'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; 

Where Pindus-bom Araxes took 

The guise of any grist-mill brook, 

And dread Olympus at his will 

Became a huckleberry hill. 

A careless boy that night he seemed; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed. 
And hostage from the future took 
In trainM thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 
Who, following in War's bloody trail. 
Shall every lingering wrong assail ; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike; 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance. 
The pride, the lust, the squaUd sloth. 
Which niirtured Treason's monstrous growth. 
Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible; 
The cruel He of caste refute. 
Old forms recast, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will. 
For blind routine, wise-handed skill; 



Snow -Bound 287 

A school-house plant on every hill, 

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 

The quick wires of intelligence; 

Till North and South together brought 

Shall own the same electric thought, fos 

In peace a common flag salute, 

And, side by side in labor's free 

And unresentful rivalry. 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night 610 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nattu"e passionate and bold, 515 

Strong, self -concentred, spuming guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 52c 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash, 

Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 525 

And under low brows, black with night. 

Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presaging ill to him whom Fate 

Condemned to share her love or hate. 530 

A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like degree 
The vixen and the devotee, 
Revealing with each freak or feint 535 



288 American Literary Readings 

The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist; 
The warm, dark langmsh of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 
Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout; 
And the sweet voice had notes more high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock ! 

Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 

The crazy Queen of Lebanon 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 

She watches under Eastern skies. 

With hope each day renewed and fresh. 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh. 

Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be. 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go! 

The outward wayward life we see. 

The hidden springs we may not know. 

Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun. 
Through what ancestral years has run 



Snow-Bound 289 

The sorrow with the woman bom, 575 

What forged her cruel chain of moods, 
What set her feet in soHtudes, 

And held the love within her mute. 
What mingled madness in the blood, 

A life-long discord and annoy, 575 

Water of tears with oil of joy, 
And hid within the folded bud 

Perversities of flower and fruit. 
It is not ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, sso 

To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land, 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events; 
But He who knows our frame is just, sss 

Merciful, and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is. 
That He remembereth we are dust ! 

At last the great logs, crumbling low, soo 

Sent out a dull and duller glow, . 

The bull's-eye watch that hung in view. 

Ticking its weary circuit through. 

Pointed with mutely-warning sign 

Its black hand to the hour of nine. 895 

That sign the pleasant circle broke: 

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke. 

Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray 

And laid it tenderly away, 

Then roused himself to safely cover eoo 

The dull red brand with ashes over. 

And while, with care, our mother laid 

The work aside, her steps she stayed 

One moment, seeking to express 



290 American Literary Readings 

Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
And love's contentment more than wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak. 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek. 
But such as warm the generous heart, 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night. 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within otir beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new ; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars. 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
Of merry voices high and clear ; 
And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half -buried oxen go. 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost. 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door the straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 



Snow -Bound 291 

The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 

From hp to Hp ; the younger folks 
Down the loose snow-banks, wresthng, rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine. 

And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter- weighed. 
From every bam a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
Haply the watchful young men saw 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls. 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-balls' compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm with Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; 

And, following where the teamsters led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round. 
Just pausing at our door to say. 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night oiu" mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light. 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity! 



292 American Literary Readings 

So days went on : a week had passed 

Since the great world was heard from last. 

The Almanac we studied o'er, 

Read and reread our little store, 

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 

One harmless novel, mostly hid 

From younger eyes, a book forbid, 

And poetry, (or good or bad, 

A single book was all we had,) 

Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 

A stranger to the heathen Nine, 

Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 
The wars of David and the Jews. 
At last the floundering carrier bore 
The village paper to our door. 
Lo ! broadening outward as we read. 
To warmer zones the horizon spread; 
In panoramic length unrolled 
We saw the marvels that it told. 
Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetos winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow! 
Welcome to us its week-old news. 
Its comer for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death : 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street. 



Snow-Bound 293 

The pulse of life that round us beat; 710 

The chill embargo of the snow 

Was melted in the genial glow ; 

Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 

And all the world was oiu-s once more! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 718 

And folded wings of ashen gray 

And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book ; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 

Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 720 

Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

Green hills of life that slope to death, 725 

And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall, 78o 

Importunate hours that hours succeed. 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 

I hear again the voice that bids ns 

The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years. 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 7«o 

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngful city ways ^ 



294 American Literary Readings 

Of winter joys his boyhood knew; 

745 And dear and early friends — the few 

Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
These Flemish pictures of old days ; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 
-750 To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze! 

And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 

755 Wood-fiinged, the wayside gaze beyond; 

The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence. 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



ICHABOD! 

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn, 

Which once he wore! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 



Revile him not, — the Tempter hath 

A snare for all; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall! 



O, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age. 

Falls back in night. 



Ichabod! 295 

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark 

A bright soul driven, 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, la 

From hope and heaven! 



Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now, 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. w 



But let its humbled sons, instead. 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 



Of all we loved and honored, naught as 

Save power remains, — 
A fallen angel's pride of thought, 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone; from those great eyes 

The soul has fled: so 

When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead! 



Then, pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame; 
Walk backward with averted gaze «» 

And hide the shame! 



296 American Literary Readings 

SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 
Of all the rides since the birth of time, 
Told in story or sung in rhyme, — 
On Apuleius's Golden Ass, 
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass, 
Witch astride of a human back, 
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, — 
The strangest ride that ever was sped 
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead! 

Body of turkey, head of owl. 
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, 
Feathered and ruffled in every part 
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
Scores of women, old and young, 
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue. 
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane. 
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead!" 

Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips. 

Girls in bloom of cheek and lips. 

Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 

Bacchus round some antique vase. 

Brief of skirt, with ankles bare. 

Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, 

With conch shells blowing and fish-horns' twang, 

Over and over the Maenads sang: 

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead!" 



Skipper I resort's Ride 297 

Small pity for him! — He sailed away 

From a leaking ship, in Chaleur Bay, — ■ 35 

Sailed away from a sinking wreck. 

With his own town's people on her deck! 

"Lay by! lay by!" they called to him. 

Back he answered, "Sink or swim! 

Brag of your catch of fish again ! " 40 

And off he sailed through the fog and rain! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead 1 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur , 46. 

That wreck shall He forevermore. 

Mother and sister, wife and maid, 

Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 

Over the moaning and rainy sea, — 

Looked for the coming that might not be ! so 

What did the winds and the sea-birds say 

Of the cruel captain who sailed away? — 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 

By the women of Marblehead ! ss 

Through the street, on either side. 

Up flew windows, doors swung wide; 

Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, 

Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. 

Sea-worn grandsires, cripple-bound, eo 

Hulks of old sailors run aground. 

Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, 

And cracked with curses the hoarse refrain : 
"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt es 

By the women o' Morble'ead!" 



298 American Literary Readings 

Sweetly along the Salem road 
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 
Little the wicked skipper knew 
Of the fields so green and the skies so blue. 
Riding there in his sorry trim, 
Like an Indian idol glum and grim, 
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
Of voices shouting, far and near : 

"Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead!" 

"Hear me, neighbors!" at last he cried, — 
"What to me is this noisy ride? 
What is the shame that clothes the skin 
To the nameless horror that lives within? 
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, 
And hear a cry from a reeling deck ! 
Hate me and curse me, — I only dread 
The hand of God and the face of the dead!" 
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead! 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
Said, "God has touched him! — why should we?' 
Said an old wife mourning her only son, 
"Cut the rogue's tether and let him run!" 
So with soft relentings and rude excuse, 
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose. 
And gave him a cloak to hide him in. 
And left him alone with his shame and sin. 
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart. 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 



In School -Days 299 

IN SCHOOL-DAYS 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sunning; 
Around it still the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry vines are running. 

Within, the master's desk is seen, 

Deep scarred by raps official; 
The warping floor, the battered seats, 

The jack-knife's carved initial; 

The charcoal frescos on its wall; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying 
The feet that, creeping slow to school, 

Went storming out to playing! 

Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting; 
Lit up its western window-panes. 

And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touched the tangled golden curls, 

And brown eyes full of grieving, 
Of one who still her steps delayed 

When all the school were leaving. 

For near her stood the little boy 

Her childish favor singled ; 
His cap pulled low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled. 

Pushing with restless feet the snow 

To right and left, he lingered; — 
As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue-checked apron fingered. 



300 American Literary Readings 

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt 
I The soft hand's light caressing, 

And heard the tremble of her voice, 
As if a fault confessing, 

"I'm sorry that I spelt the word: 
I hate to go above you, 
I Because," — the brown eyes lower fell,- 

" Because, you see, I love you!" 

Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 
Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
) Have forty years been growing ! 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
How few who pass above him 

Lament their triumph and his loss, 
Like her, — because they love him. 




From an engraving 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

1809-1894 

If Lowell is our chief critical essayist and Emerson our 
greatest philosophical thinker, Oliver Wendell Holmes is 
no less surely to be classed with Irving as one of our two 
greatest informal essayists. We think of Holmes first as 
a humorist and the author of The Autocrat of the Breakfast 
Table, that unique book of informal, chatty talks or essays. 
But he is also a poet, if not of the very first rank among 
our American authors, certainly very near to it, for two or 
three of his lyrics, as well as much of his inimitable humorous 
poetry, will bear comparison with the best of their kind. 
Moreover, he is the most human, the most intimately 
personal, and the most consistently optimistic of all the 
New England school, and hence he is the favorite author 
of thousands of readers who would not think of classing his 
poetry or even his prose as the greatest produced in America. 
Though he was not 'autocratic in his disposition, we may 
call him the beloved "Autocrat" of American literature. 

Holmes was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 
29, 1809, just two years later than Longfellow and Whittier, 
in the same year with Poe and Lincoln, and ten years 
earlier than Lowell and Whitman. He outlived practically 
all of his literary contemporaries, dying in 1894, two years 
later than Whittier and Whitman, twelve 3^ears later than 
Longfellow and Emerson, and forty-two years later than 
Edgar Allan Poe. It seems almost unbelievable that Poe, 
who was bom in the same year as Holmes had been dead 
eight years before Holmes began his famous "Autocrat" 
papers in the Atlantic Monthly. 

He was descended from what he called the "Brahmin 
caste" of New England, on both sides of the house. His 
father, Abiel Holmes, the pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of Cambridge, traced his line of descent even beyond 
the John Holmes who came from England to Connecticut in 
1686. His mother, Sarah Wendell, was the daughter of 
Oliver Wendell of Boston, for whom the poet was named, 
and she was directly connected with the Dudleys, Brad- 
streets, Quincys, and other distinguished New England 

[301] 



302 American Literary Readings 

families. These facts are mentioned because Dr. Holmes 
himself thoroughly believed in heredity and had much to say 
about it in his works. 

His education was the best to be had in America in his day. 
After a few years in an elementary school, he went to Phillips 
Academy, Andover, and from there he entered Harvard Col- 
lege in 1825, the year that Longfellow and Hawthorne 
graduated at Bowdoin College in Maine. He was already 
a skilled rimester, having made a metrical translation of 
Vergil's Aeneid when he was at Andover, and he was selected 
as class poet. "The famous class of '29" has become so 
partly because a number of distinguished men came from 
it, but largely from the fact that 'Holmes was its poet and 
for nearly a half century read delightful poems at the 
annual class reunions. After graduation he said that he 
flirted with Blackstone and Chitty for a year in anticipation 
of becoming a lawyer, but his scientific turn of mind led him 
finally to decide in favor of medicine. After studying in 
Boston for a short time, he went abroad and spent two years, 
mostly in Paris, in preparation for his profession. He visited 
England, Italy, and Switzerland before his return in 1835, 
and the next year he took his degree' at Harvard Medical 
College. He located at Boston, the city which he loved 
devotedly and which he once playfully called "the hub of the 
solar system," and when he prepared to hang out his pro- 
fessional sign he characteristically proposed to write beneath 
his name the motto "Small fevers thankfully received." 

Holmes did not like the emotional strain of the sick room 
and operating table, but he was an enthusiastic investigator 
and a careful observer of the science of medicine. He was 
gradually building up a practice, but he rather joyfully 
relinquished it for the most part, when, in 1847, some years 
after a short incumbency in the same chair at Dartmouth 
College, he was elected to be professor of anatomy and 
physiology at Harvard. He held the position thirty-five 
years as professor and twelve more years as professor 
emeritus, and during all the time of his active duties he was 
considered the most popular lecturer in the Harvard Medical 
College. He made several notable discoveries in medicine, 
and his scientific and inventive gifts led him to perfect the 
stereoscope, that popular and entertaining little binocular 
device by which pictured objects are made to stand out 
almost as distinctly as they do in real life. 



Oliver Wendell Holmes 303 

In 1840 he married Miss Amelia Lee Jackson, who proved 
to be an ideal mate for a man like Dr. Holmes. She 
encouraged and helped him and protected him in many 
ways, so that he was enabled to do the work that he was 
born for. They had three children, all of whom lived to 
maturity, and Mrs. Holmes herself lived to within a few 
years of the poet's death. 

Holmes's poetical work falls into two classes — his serious 
lyrics and his humorous and occasional pieces. He wrote 
three or four supremely excellent lyrics, and upon these his 
poetic fame chiefly rests— "Old Ironsides," "The Last 
Leaf," "The Chambered Nautilus," and "Voiceless." He 
composed some longer serious poems, such as "The Rhymed 
Lesson," otherwise called "Urania," and "Wind Clouds and 
Snow Drifts," but these have never met the hearty response 
of his shorter and more perfect lyrics. "The Last Leaf" 
and "The Chambered Nautilus" deservedly rank among 
the very finest lyrics in the language. No collection is 
complete without them, and they are the chief decorative 
gems of every anthology or golden treasury of American 
songs. 

It is his humorous and occasional verse that, after all, 
gives Holmes his distinctive place in our memory. Here 
he is perfectly natural and spontaneous. Lowell correctly 
characterized Holmes as 

"A Leydcn jar always full charged, from which fiit 
Electrical tingles of hit after hit." 

The mere mentioning of such titles as "The Deacon's 
Masterpiece," "The Height of the Ridiculous," "Content- 
ment," "My Aunt," and many others, arouses humorous 
sensations of a delightful kind. Holmes had a way of giving 
these light and whimsical humorous pieces a more universal 
and lasting quality than such literature usually attains. 
His Harvard class poems are full of fun and good fellowship, 
and his local and occasional poems are the best that we have 
of their kind, but they will doubtless be read less and less as 
time goes on. 

It was not until late in 1857 that Holmes attained any- 
thing like permanent fame as an author. In this year the 
Atlantic Monthly was founded, and Holmes was engaged 
to write regularly for it. He suggested the name of the new 
magazine, and it is not too much to say that it was his 



304 American Literary Readings 

contributions that largely gave this periodical its dominant 
character and its immediate popular hold on the public. We 
must give Lowell the credit, however, for making it a pre- 
cedent condition of his editorship that Holmes should write 
for the magazine, and not the least of Lowell's services 
in the furthering of American literature was the stimulus 
he gave Holmes, whom, as the latter shrewdly said, he woke 
"from a kind of literary lethargy." Lowell remarked later 
that Holmes was a "sparkling mountain stream which 
had been dammed up and was only awaiting an outlet into 
the Atlantic." 

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: Or Every Man His 
Own Boswell is a unique book, and is as surely marked for 
immortality as any single volume in our literature. It is a 
series of what William Dean Howells called "dramatized 
essays," with a thick sprinkling of poems, serious and 
humorous, to add variety to the Autocrat's dramatic 
monologues. The subtitle indicates that Holmes is really 
writing the history of his own thoughts, showing us just how 
his own mind works. The three volumes which make up 
the Breakfast Table series. The Autocrat (1858), The Pro- 
fessor (1859), and The Poet (187 1), together with Over the 
Teacups (1888), which really belongs in the same group, 
certainly give us a most satisfying portrait of the genial 
"Autocrat's" mind. There is in these books much real 
intellectual pabulum, but certainly no formal philosophy. 
Holmes was simply giving us the best observations he had 
been able to make on life. "Talk about those subjects you 
have had long in your mind," he said, "and listen to what 
others say about subjects you have studied but recently. 
Knowledge and timber should not be much used till they 
are seasoned." And again when he was asked how long it 
took him to write the "Autocrat" papers, he repHed that 
it took him all his life up to the time he wrote them down. 
The easy conversational tone, the vividly drawn character 
sketches, the clear thought, the scintillating wit and delight- 
fully good-natured humor, the unbounded optimism, and 
the uncompromising hostility toward tyranny, narrowness, 
and sham, make the whole "Autocrat" series one of the few 
really original contributions to nineteenth-century literature. 

The Autocrat is confessedly the best of the series, because 
it was the first, and because it contains the cream of Holmes's 
spontaneous wit and Hfe-long thought. The other three 



Oliver Wendell Holmes -305 

volumes are all worth reading, and some discerning critics 
have said that, though more serious and subdued in tone, 
they are not less entertaining to the thoughtful reader. The 
Autocrat more than likely, however, has a hundred readers 
to one for any of the other volumes. It is a book to be 
dipped into, to be taken up at odd moments when one wants 
to hear a genial, witty, healthy personality talk for his 
own and his reader's amusement and profit. It is true 
that the slight thread of romance developed between the 
"Autocrat" and the timid schoolmistress leads one to read 
steadily through the last four papers; but after one perusal, 
the book is to be glanced at for pure pleasure rather than 
read straight through. 

In The Professor at the Breakfast Table, Holmes had in- 
troduced a more prominent romantic thread to his series of 
talks. This led him to write his first novel, Elsie Venner 
(1861). Two other novels followed. The Guardian Angel 
(1867) and A Mortal Antipathy (1888). Like the " Autocrat ' ' 
series these were first published serially in the Atlantic 
Monthly. Holmes called them "medicated novels," because 
they are more or less concerned with problems pertaining 
to the science of medicine. The first deals with the experi- 
ences of Elsie Venner, who was endowed with peculiar 
powers of serpentine fascination and hypnotic influence 
because of the bite of a rattlesnake suffered by her mother 
just before Elsie was born. The Guardian Angel, said to be 
the most artistic of the three, deals with the problem of 
heredity; and A Mortal Antipathy traces the cause, growth, 
and cure of a strong antipathy or hatred against woman in 
a man's life. As works of fiction, these novels do not rise 
above mediocrity, but, like everything that Holmes put his 
hand to, they are well written and deserving of at least 
a cursory perusal. 

The last field in which Holmes employed his gift for 
authorship was in biography. He wrote A Memoir of John 
Lathrop Motley (1879) and The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson 
(1884). These are excellent and painstaking works. It 
seems strange that Holmes should have been attracted to 
such a profound and dignified personality as Emerson's, but 
when we examine into Holmes's real philosophy of life, we 
find that it is not altogether unlike Emerson's. At any 
rate Holmes produced a remarkably sympathetic and illu- 
minating study of the great thinker, essayist, and poet. 

11 



3o6 American Literary Readings 

In 1886 Holmes took a pleasure trip to Europe, which he 
wrote up in his happy personal style in "One Hundred 
Days in Europe." He was accorded many honors by the 
cities and universities which he visited. At Cambridge, 
England, the students welcomed him with some cleverly 
adapted new words to an old song, the title of which was 
"Holmes, Sweet Holmes." 

He lived to the ripe old age of eighty-six and, while seated 
in his chair, died what seemed to be practically a painless 
death on October 7, 1894. 



THE LAST LEAF 

I saw him once before, 
As he passed by the door, 

And again 
The pavement stones resound, 
As he totters o'er the ground 

With his cane. 

They say that in his prime. 
Ere the pruning-knife of Time 

Cut him down. 
Not a better man was found 
By the Crier on his round 

Through the town. 

But now he walks the streets. 
And he looks at all he meets 

Sad and wan, 
And he shakes his feeble head, 
That it seems as if he said, 

"They are gone." 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has prest 

In their bloom, 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb. 

My grandmamma has said, — 
Poor old lady, she is dead 
Long ago,— 

[307] 



3o8 American Literary Readings 

That he had a Roman nose, 
And his cheek was Hke a rose 
In the snow. 

But now his nose is thin, 
And it rests upon his chin 

Like a staff, 
And a crook is in his back, 
And a melancholy crack 

In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 
For me to sit and grin 

At him here; 
But the old three-cornered hat, 
And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer! 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring, — 
Let them smile, as I do now, 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE 

IV 

.... — My friend, the Professor, whom I have mentioned to 
you once or twice, told me yesterday that somebody had been 
abusing him in some of the journals of his calling. I told 
hirh that I did n't doubt he deserved it; that I hoped he did 
deserve a little abuse occasionally, and would for a number 
of years to come; that nobody could do anything to make 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 309 

his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to abuse 
for it; especially that people hated to have their little 
mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing 
something of the kind. — The Professor smiled. — Now, said I, 10 
hear what I am going to say. It will not take many years 
to bring you to the period of life when men, at least the 
majority of writing and talking men, do nothing but praise. 
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before 
they begin to decay. I don't know what it is, — whether 15 
a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is 
thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical honesty, 
— but it is a fact, that most writers, except sour and unsuc- 
cessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about the time when 
they are beginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would 20 
not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is 
himself an author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are 
all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of 
this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, 
or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are ready to help 25 
others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's 
elbows are in our way. So I am glad you have a little life 
left; you will be saccharine enough in a few years. 

— Some of the softening effects of advancing age have 
struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and 30 
elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that 
authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual pas- 
sage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters 
sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid 
as young children? I have heard it said, but I cannot be 35 
sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was 
rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An old man, 
whose studies had been of the severest scnolastic kind, used 
to love to hear little nursery-stories read over and over to- 
him. One who saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years 40 
describes him as very gentle in his aspect and demeanor. 
I remember a person of singularly stern and lofty bearing 



3IO American Literary Readings 

who became remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in 
the later period of his Ufe. 

45 And that leads me to say that men often remind me of 
pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some are ripe 
at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must be made the 
most of, for their day is soon over. Some come into their 
perfect condition late, like the autumn kinds, and they last 

50 better than the summer fruit. And some, that, like the 
Winter-Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the 
rest have had their season, get their glow and perfume long 
after the frost and snow have done their worst with the 
orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and 

55 stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter 
pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough 
in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. 
Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate 
Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet 

60 skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre ; the buds of a 
new stmimer were swelling when he ripened. 

— There is no power I envy so much — said the divinity- 
student — as that of seeing analogies and making com- 
parisons. I don't understand how it is that some minds 

65 are continually coupHng thoughts or objects that seem not 
in the least related to each other, until all at once they are. 
put in a certain light, and you wonder that you did not always 
see that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears 
to me a sort of a miraculous gift. 

70 [He is rather a nice young man, and I think has an appre- 
ciation of the higher mental qualities remarkable for one 
of his years and training. I try his head occasionally as 
housewives try eggs, — give it an intellectual shake and hold 
it up to the Hght, so to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual 

75 or potential, or only contains lifeless albumen.] 

You call it miraculous, — I replied, — tossing the expression 
with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I fear. — Two men 
are walking by the polyphloesboean ocean, one of them 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 311 

having a small tin cup with which he can scoop up a gill of 
sea- water when he will, and the other nothing but his hands, so 
which will hardly hold water at all, — and you call the tin cup 
a miraculous possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all things 
are in all things, and that just according to the intensity and 
extension of our mental being we shall see the many in the ss 
one and the one in the many. Did Sir Isaac think what he 
was saying when he made his speech about the ocean, — the 
child and the pebbles, you know? Did he mean to speak 
slightingly of a pebble? Of a spherical solid which stood 
sentinel over its compartment of space before the stone that 90 
became the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched 
it until now ! A body which knows all the ciurents of force 
that traverse the globe; which holds by invisible threads to 
the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion ! A body from the 
contemplation of which an archangel could infer the entire 95 
inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A throne 
of the all-pervading Deity who has gmded its every atom 
since the rosary of heaven was strung with beaded stars! 

So, — to return to our walk by the ocean, — if all that poetry 
has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, all that madden- 100 
ing narcotics have driven through the brains of men, or 
smothered passion nursed in the fancies of women, — if the 
dreams of colleges and convents and boarding-schools, — if 
every human feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, 
or groans, should bring all their innumerable images, such 105 
as come with every hurried heart-beat, — the epic which 
held them all, though its letters filled the zodiac, would 
be but a cupful from the infinite ocean of similitudes and 
analogies that rolls through the universe. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way in no 
which he received this. He did not swallow it at once, 
neither did he reject it; but he took it as a pickerel takes 
the bait, and carried it off with him to his hole (in the fourth 
story) to deal with at his leisure.] 



312 American Literary Readings 

115 I know well enough that there are some of you who had 
a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for 
any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, 

receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to 

, — on the strength of some youthful antic 

120 of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constitu- 
ency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin? 

— Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, 
and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But 
then observe this : if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of 

125 an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there 
is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so 
have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and 
tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of 
sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; 

130 that is all. I have often heard the Professor talk about 
hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illustration of the 
reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these 
acts are the manifestations. But you may see it every day 
in children; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at 

135 sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older years, go 
and see Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural. 

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge 
his love for the ridiculous. People laugh with him just so 
long as he amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, 

140 they must still have their laugh, and so they laugh at him. 
There is in addition, however, a deeper reason for this than 
would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little 
superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by 
making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a 

145 pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend 
so far as to let him ttun somersets, literal or literary, for your 
royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand 
on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor 
who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right! — first- 

150 rate performance ! — and all the rest of the fine phrases. But 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 313 

if all at once the perfomier asks the gentleman to come upon 
the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk 
down at him, — ah, that wasn't in the programme! 

I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney 
Smith — who, as everybody knows, was an exceedingly 155 
sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch of him — ventured 
to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The " Quar- 
terly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in 
the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a 
"diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; leo 
sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a 
coiul:, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have 
been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, 
or to any decent person even. — If I were giving advice to a 
young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, les 
I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the back- 
ground until after he had made a reputation by his more solid 
qualities. And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic 
afterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor 
Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you no 
can do anything great with Macbeth' s dagger after flourish- 
ing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do you know, too, 
that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their 
attention, — for a while, at least, — as beggars, and nuisances? 
They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the 175 
cheapest of all things they can give a literary man — pardon 
the forlorn pleasantry! — is the funny-bone. That is all 
very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes 
a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion. 

— Oh, indeed, no ! — I am not ashamed to make you laugh, iso 
occasionally. I think I could read you something I have 
in my desk which would probably make you smile. Perhaps 
I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me 
when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The 
ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human iss 
invention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the 



314 American Literary Readings 

practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aris- 
tophanes or Shakespeare. How curious it is that we always 
consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises 

190 and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future 
life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties 
and then call blessed! There are not a few who, even in 
this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smile- 
less eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all 

195 gaiety from their hearts and all joyousness from their 
countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfre- 
quently, a person of intelligence and education, but who 
gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling 
look of recognition, — something as if he were one of Heaven's 

200 assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met, 
, — that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and 
gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. 
I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught 
her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play 

205 with it? 

No, no! — give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow- 
boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any 
scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as 
giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my 

210 sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other 
literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas 
Browne: "Every man truly lives, so long as he acts 

HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES' OF 
HIMSELF." 

215 I find the great thing in this world is not so much where 
we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach 
the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind 
and sometimes against it, — but we must sail, and not drift, 
nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friend- 

220 ships, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is 
this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the 
seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 315 

then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a 
string of thought tied to him, and look — I am afraid with 
a kind of luxiirious and sanctimonious compassion — to 2*5 
see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there 
bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along 
with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows; — the 
ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of dia- 
monds stuck in it ! But this is only the sentimental side of 230 
the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love. 
Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, 
I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we 
cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with 
whom we have long been in the habit of comparing our- 235 
selves; and when they once become stationary, we can get 
our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see 
just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike 
the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves 
to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If 240 
we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one 
of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for 
some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. 
There is one of our companions; — her streamers were torn 
into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and 245 
by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the 
waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a 
seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. 
But lo! at dawn she is still in sight, — it may be in advance 
of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving her on, 250 
strong, but silent, — yes, stronger than these noisy winds that 
puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant 
cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the 
skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later 
and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting 255 
and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks 
are refitted, and where, alas ! we, towering in our pride, may 
never come. 



3i6 American Literary Readings 

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old 

260 friendships, because we cannot help instituting comparisons 

between our present and former selves by the aid of those 

who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing 

strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many 

give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement 

265 day" always reminds me of the start for the " Derby," when 

the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season are 

brought up for trial. That day is the start, and Hfe is the 

race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just 

"graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, 

270 but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of 

the church; ah! there it is: — 

"Hung lapidem posuerunt 
socii mcerentes." 

But this is the start, and here they are, — coats bright as 

275 silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make them. 
Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few 
minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentle- 
man crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three 
girls, what are they all covering their eyes for? Oh, that is 

280 their colt which has just been trotted up on the stage. 
Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything 
in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next 
forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that 
comes to some of us when we begin to look through the 

285 silvered rings of the arcus senilis! 

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few broken 
down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of 
the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the 
rest ; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, 

290 of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has pulled up. 
Twenty years. Second comer turned. Cassock has 
dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray, has the 
lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 317 

flat, — five,— six, — how many? They. lie still enough! they 
will not get up again in this race, be very siu-e! And the 295 
rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who 
is going to win, — perhaps. 

Thirty years. Third comer turned. Dives, bright sorrel, 
ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play 
fast; is getting to be the favourite with many. But who is 300 
that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the 
first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you 
remember the quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in 
his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; 
look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call 305 
him, is in the background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. 
There is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a 
certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not 
to be despised, my boy! 

Forty years. More dropping off, — but places much as 310 
before. 

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the course are 
coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? 
Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or 
gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no 315 
more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world 
marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that 
these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew 
how! 

— Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe 320 
swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will 
not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to 
show you what thoughts were suggested to them by the 
simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I 
will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by 325 
looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which 
is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble 
ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper 
Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name applied 



3i8 American Literary Readings 

330 to both shows that each has long been compared to a ship, 
as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the 
"Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into 
Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one 
of these shells, and a section of it. The last will show you 

335 the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in 
by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a 
widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this? 

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS^ 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — • 
-340 The venturous bark that flings 

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings. 

And coral reefs lie bare. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

345 Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 
Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
And every chambered cell. 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell. 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell 
350 Before thee lies revealed, — 

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil; 
Still, as the spiral grew, 
355 He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 

1 1 have now and then found a naturalist who still worried over the 
distinction between the Pearly Nautilus and the Paper Nautilus, or 
Argonauta. As the stories about both are mere fables, attaching to 
the Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war, as well as to these two molluscs, 
it seems over-nice to quarrel with the poetical handling of a fiction suffi- 
ciently justified by the name, commonly applied to the ship of pearl as 
well as the ship of paper. 



The Autocrat oj ike Breakfast Table 319 

Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, seo 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 
While on mine ear it rings, 

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : — 355 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, . 370 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 

XI 

[The company looked a little flustered one morning when 
I came in, — so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, 
the divinity-student, what had been going on. It appears 
that the young fellow whom they call John had taken 
advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather 5 
longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate 
several questions involving a quibble or play upon words, — 
in short, containing that indignity to the human under- 
standing, condemned in the passages from the distinguished 
moralist of- the last century and the illustrious historian 10 
of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known 
as a pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me 
a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and 
their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what 



320 American Literary Readings 

15 a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young 
persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence 
of more reflective natures. — It was asked, "Why tertian 
and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." 
Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally 

20 suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer 
is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or two. — 
"Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken 
his grog or punch." The answer proves to have no relation 
whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason 

25 is given than that island- (or, as it is absurdly written, He 
and) water won't mix. — But when I came to the next question 
and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. 
"Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of 
sensibility would be slow to propose ; but that in an educated 

30 community an individual could be found to answer it in these 
words, — "Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious, — 
is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper. 

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. 
I know most conversations reported in books are altogether 

35 above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every 
table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will 
come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have 
talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't, 
— he made jokes. 

40 I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your ingenuity in a 
rational and contemplative manner. — No, I do not proscribe 
certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an 
approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, 
•for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas 

45 Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, "De Sancto Matri- 
monio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to 
profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by 
my friend the Professor. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 321 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: 

OR THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS-SHAY " 

A Logical Story 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay, 

That was built in such a logical way 

It ran a hundred years to a day, 

And then, of a sudden, it— ah, but stay, 

I '11 tell you what happened without delay, 

Scaring the parson into fits. 

Frightening people out of their wits, — 

Have you ever heard of that, I say? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 
Georgius Secundus was then alive, — 
Snuffy old drone from the German hive. 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
And Braddock's army was done so brown. 
Left without a scalp to its crown. ' 
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what. 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still 
Find it somewhere you must and will, — 
Above or below, or within or without, — 
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
A chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. 

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, 
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,") 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 



322 American Literary Readings 

'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; 
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown: 
I — "Fur," said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain ; 
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

i So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 

Where he could find the strongest oak, 
That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, — 
That was for spokes and floor and sills; 
He sent for lancewood to make the thills ; 

) The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; 
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 
But lasts like iron for things like these ; 
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum," — 
Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em, 

5 Never an axe h^d seen their chips. 

And the wedges flew from between their lips. 
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; 
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 

• Steel of the finest, bright and blue; 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; 
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 
Found in the pit when the tanner died. 
That was the way he "put her through." — 

5 "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew." 

Do ! I tell you, I rather guess 
She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 
^ Colts grew horses, beards turned gray. 
Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 
Children and grandchildren — where were they? 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 323 

But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay 
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 

Eighteen hundred; — it came and found 
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; — 
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; — 
Running as usual; much the same. 
Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large ; 

Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

First of November, — the Earthquake-day. — 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay. 
But nothing local as one may say. 
There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art 
Had made it so like in every part 
That there was n't a chance for one to start. 
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills. 
And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 
And the panels just as strong as the floor. 
And the whippletree neither less nor more, 
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, 
And spring and axle and hub encore. 
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt 
In another hour it will be worn out! 



324 American Literary Readings 

First of November, 'Fifty-five ! 
This morning the parson takes a drive. 
Now, small boys, get out of the way ! 
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
"Huddup!" said the parson. — Off went they. 

The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 

) Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 

At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still, 
Close by the meet 'n' -house on the hill. 
— First a shiver, and then a thrill, 

5 Then something decidedly like a spill, — 

And the parson was sitting -upon a rock, 
At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,- 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 
— What do you think the parson found, 

9 When he got up and stared around? 

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground ! 
You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce. 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 

5 All at once, and nothing first, — 

Just as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 
Logic is logic. That's all I say. 




HENRY D. THOREAU 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

1817-1S62 

One of the effects of the transcendental movement was to 
s^nd men back to nature. The most distinguished spirit of 
this movement was Emerson, whose first book was entitled 
Nature. But the man who went farthest into the real mys- 
teries of nature was Henry David Thoreau. We look 
upon him now as the pioneer and perhaps still the greatest 
•of the large school of nature writers which has sprung up 
in recent years. His friend William Ellery Channing 
called him the poet-naturalist, the happy designation by 
which Thoreau is still widely known. He was, indeed, in 
spirit a poet as well as a naturalist, and he recorded much 
of his early thought in verse form; but in later years he 
expressed himself entirely in prose, and he is now chiefly 
valued as an original and striking prose stylist, who conscien- 
tiously and lovingly portrayed the varied aspects of nature 
in and around his native village of Concord, Massachusetts. 

Thoreau was the son of John Thoreau, a descendant of a 
French family which had settled on the island of Jersey, and 
Cynthia Dunbar, a sprightly 'woman of Scotch descent. 
He was bom at Concord, July 12, 181 7. Both his parents 
had been reared at Concord, and the family seems to have 
taken deep root in this consecrated soil. Henry could not 
bear to think of living in any other place. Emerson, 
Hawthorne, Channing, the Alcotts, and other notable 
literary persons lived here, but none of them was so thor- 
oughly attached to the soil, so much a natural outgrowth 
of it, and none has so faithfully and lovingly preserved the 
external features and the spiritual atmosphere of the region 
round about as Thoreau. He seemed to be a part of nature 
itself in this particular spot. For a few years during his 
early childhood his parents went to seek their fortune in 
other places near by, but they came back to Concord in time 
for Henry to get his common-school education there. Then 
he vvas sent to Harvard College, and by the combined finan- 
cial help of the members of his family he was enabled to 
graduate in 1837. So little did he value the diploma and 

[325] 



326 American Literary Readings 

so much was economy necessary that he refused to pay the 
five dollars' fee necessary to secure the formal certificate of 
his graduation. He engaged in teaching for a few years, 
finding a place in his native town to test his ability in this 
capacity, but his refusal to continue the practice of admin- 
istering corporal punishment led to his withdrawal from the 
business of keeping school. He then took up his father's 
business of pencil-making. By working industriously he soon 
mastered the secrets of this peculiar occupation, and he' 
was in a fair way to earn a substantial income. With that 
eccentricity for which he had already become noticeable, he 
announced that he would make no more pencils, since he did 
not care to do again what he had once learned to do well. 
He decided that the best thing a man could do was to learn 
to live simply and economically, avoiding much of the 
unnecessary frippery and luxury of modern life. He thought 
that most people spent entirely too much time making a 
living and entirely too little in really living. "A man is 
rich," he said, "in proportion to the number of things he can 
afford to let alone." If any friend proposed that Thoreau 
should embark in some enterprise, he was ready to reply that 
he had already embarked in a permanent business venture, 
— namely, the living of his own life in his own way. 

Of course he had to work part of the time to earn the actual 
means of subsistence, but he accepted Carlyle's doctrine 
that the chief way to satisfy one's desires was to "reduce 
the denominator of life's fraction." He estimated that he 
could earn enough in one day's labor to subsist for a week, 
and he proportioned his own time in just about this ratio 
between manual labor and quiet observation, meditation, 
and loitering in the presence of wild nature. He was by 
no means idle during these experiences in the fields and 
forests and on the lakes and streams, for he was continually 
studying nature and recording his own thoughts and im- 
pressions. His manual labor was of varied kinds — gardening, 
carpentry, fence-building, but primarily surveying. He once 
jocularly quoted Cowper's poem on Alexander Selkirk, 

"I am monarch of all I survey," 

and he summarized his occupations by saying that his steadi- 
est employment was to keep himself in the top of condition 
so as to be ready for anything that might turn up on earth 
or in heaven. He began to lecture with more or less 



Henry David Thoreau 327 

regularity after the lyceums came into vogue, but he was 
never a great favorite in this field. 

Thoreau never married. It is said that in his young 
manhood he fell in love with a beautiful and vivacious girl 
who visited in his father's home, but when he saw that his 
younger brother John was interested in the young lady, he 
quietly renounced his own claims upon her. The young 
lady herself, as the sequel showed, did not favor either one 
of the brothers, but married some one else. Thoreau was 
too much centered in the development of his own inner life, 
too coldly self-mastering, too passionless to become en- 
meshed in the ties of sentiment or domestic life, and it is 
perhaps well that he did not marry. It is certainly unjust 
to him, however, to say that he was cold and indifferent in 
his domestic relations. He was devoted to his brother 
and sisters and to his parents, he was exceedingly fond 
of children, and he was kind and helpful to the oppressed 
who came under his notice. But he was not personally 
magnetic, he made few intimate friends, and he did not 
possess a universal sympathy like that of Walt Whitman, 
for example. He was rather a man who' sought out the 
secrets of his own nature and mind and made a strict record 
of the findings, than one who opened his heart to the world 
around him. Some one suggested that he loved man as he 
loved all animals, but it is perhaps true that he preferred 
the companionship of the furred and feathered kinds. 
Emerson very correctly called him a "Bachelor of Nature." 

For several years Thoreau was an inmate of Emerson's 
home at Concord. He was a sort of adopted elder brother 
and helped to earn his keep by working around the house- 
hold and in the garden, and by tutoring Emerson's chil- 
dren in a desultory sort of way. He studied nature and 
oriental literature, talked philosophy with Emerson, opening 
the elder writer's eyes to many beauties and revealing 
secrets of nature hitherto hidden from him, and developed 
himself normally and naturally in his own way. Many have 
made the quick deduction that Thoreau owed all his philos- 
ophy to Emerson, but modern critics are inclined to believe 
that Emerson gained almost if not quite as much from 
Thoreau as Thoreau gained from Emerson, and some do not 
hesitate to affirm that Thoreau is the more original and 
certainly the more American of the two. The period of 
his residence with Emerson was an important one in 



328 American Literary Readings 

Thoreau's life, for he was beginning to find himself and 
to follow implicitly the promptings of his own instincts. 

It was about this time that he decided to go to the woods 
and live alone in order to let his genius ripen. Emerson 
owned a piece of land on Walden Pond near Concord, and 
here Thoreau "squatted." He tells us in his book Walden, 
or Life in the Woods how he borrowed an axe from Alcott, 
cut down the trees for the frame of his house, built his 
hut at a remarkably low expense, and set up housekeeping 
in the woods. He planted beans and potatoes, intending to 
live as far as possible on his own products and the fish he 
could catch in the ponds and streams. Here he became 
familiar with the beasts and birds of the forest and even 
the fishes of the lake. He recorded every item which his 
keen *eye and clear mind observed. He set down day by day 
and season by season every detail about the plants and 
animals and birds and fishes. He was developing his soul 
by studying wild life and recording his own minutest 
thoughts and emotions. He was not very far from the village 
and he made frequent visits to it. Though he expressly 
states that he did not intend to cut himself off entirely 
from organized society, yet his purpose in going to live alone 
in the woods has been grossly misunderstood and misrepre- 
sented. Even Lowell severely criticized the experiment, as 
it was called, and condemned Thoreau as a poseur; and from 
his example even Robert Louis Stevenson, though in some 
respects an admirer of Thoreau, called him a "skulker." 

But we must give the author the right to make his own 
defense in stating the purpose of his life in the woods. 
"My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live 
cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some 
private business with the fewest obstacles. ... I went 
to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to 
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could 
not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came 
to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to 
live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to 
practice resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted 
to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so 
sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not 
life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into 
a comer, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved 
to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine 



Henry David Thoreau 329 

meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if 
it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to 
give a true account of it in my next excursion." 

It is but fair to add that Thoreau found life sublime and 
that his experiment was a success in every way. He did 
not go out to prove that a man could live the simple life 
entirely separated from his fellows ; he did not go out to prove 
that a hermit's life was better than ordinary social life; he 
did not even want people to imitate his way of living. 
What he did want to do was to give his soul room to expand, 
to find out what he could best do with his endowment of 
mind and heart and eye, to study wild life closely and on 
equal and friendly terms, and to make a full and frank 
personal record of his observations and inner experiences. 
In all this he succeeded, and his success has given the public 
a new view of nature, a new inspiration for simple, sincere 
living. Far more valuable than the social experiment at 
Brook Farm is this individual and isolated experiment of 
Thoreau's. It was his method of working out the trans- 
cendental impulses of the time, and it may be accounted the 
most successful of all the experiments of its kind. 

Thoreau went to Walden Pond in 1845 and returned to 
his father's home in Concord in 1847, but the volume record- 
ing his experiences there did not appear until 1854. In the 
meantime he had completed and published in 1849 his 
first volume, an account of a tour made in a canoe by 
Thoreau and his brother John some ten years before, and 
called" >1 Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. It has a 
thin thread of narrative, but it is made up for the most part 
of selections from Thoreau's thoughts, poems, and moral 
observations during the years up to its publication. It is 
a loose, uneven composition, and has the peculiar quality of 
works of genius : it is as dry to some readers as it is fascinat- 
ing to others. Of the thousand copies printed, only about 
three hundred were disposed of by gift or sale during several 
years and the publisher finally sent the remainder of the 
edition to Thoreau's home. He packed the books away and 
jocularly remarked that he had a library of nine hundred 
volumes, seven hundred of which he had written himself. 

But he kept working along "quietly in his own vein, accu- 
mulating vast stores of notes in his journals, and presently 
Walden, or Life in the Woods, largely made up of material 
selected from these journals, was ready for publication. 



330 American Literary Readings 

This volume, from the peculiar experiment which it recorded, 
was somewhat more successful, but the public was not yet 
ready for this sort of nature interpretation, mixed with the 
sententious wisdom and moral meditations of the poet- 
naturalist. Thoreau was not enough encouraged to try 
another volume during his lifetime, but sinee his death his 
fame has been steadily growing. No American writer had 
to wait so long for his audience, but 'it now seems that 
none will hold his audience longer. During his lifetime he 
was highly appreciated by Emerson, Channing, Higginson, 
and a few others; but the great body of readers and critics, 
headed by Lowell, condemned him with slight praise, ranking 
him as a pale imitator of Emerson and as a mere poseur. It 
took half a century for the world to discover his real genius. 

Thoreau did his best thinking during his long daily walks. 
His notes of his walks are delightful records, and some of 
his best books, published since his death, are the results of his 
walking tours, as for example, The Maine Woods and Cape 
Cod, edited by Emerson, and four other books edited by 
H. G. O. Blake under the title of the four seasons. These 
posthumous volumes consisted of previously published 
papers and extracts from the thirty or more manuscript 
volumes of Thoreau's Journals. Finally in 1 896 the Journals 
themselves were published in fourteen volumes, so that now 
we have a perfect quarry of Thoreau material to dig in at will. 

It is a pity that Thoreau did not live to prepare his own 
books for publication, for he was a minute reviser and a 
careful workman on his literary style in the proof sheets. 
Perhaps we may console ourselves with the thought that 
the unpruned records as we have them give us after all a 
true picture of the man as he was. About i860 he exposed 
himself too freely in his long winter walks, and contracted 
consumption. He went to Minnesota for a time to see if the 
dry climate might not help him, but he returned not greatly 
benefited, and became a helpless but patient invalid. He 
died May 6, 1862, and was buried in the Sleepy Hollow Ceme- 
tery of his native town. Close by the spot where Thoreau's 
cabin stood near Walden Pond, a large cairn of loose stones 
has been gradually raised to his memory by the hundreds 
of pilgrims who come annually to this literary shrine. 

(The best life of this author is Thoreau: the Poet- Naturalist by 
W. E. Channing, revised by F. B. Sanborn. A good short biography 
is that by Henry S. Salt in the Great Writers Series.) 



BRUTE NEIGHBORS 

Chapter XII of Walden, or Life in the Woods 

Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came 
through the village to my house from the other side of the 
town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social 
exercise as the eating of it. 

Hermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have 5 
not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these 
three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts, — 
no flutter from them. Was that a farmer's noon horn which 
sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are 
coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. 10 
Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat 
need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. 
Who would live there where a body can never think for the 
barking of Bose? And O, the housekeeping! to keep bright 
the devil's door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! 15 
Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree ; and then for 
morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tap- 
ping. O, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are 
bom too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, 
and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf. — Hark! I hear a rust- 20 
ling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding 
to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to 
be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It 
ccmes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble. — 
Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-day? 25 

Poet. See those clouds; how they hang! That's the 
greatest thing I have seen to-day. There's nothing like 
it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands, — unless 
when we were off the coast of Spain. That's a true Medi- 
terranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and 30 

[331] 



332 American Literary Readings 

have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That's 
the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have 
learned. Come, let's along. 

Hermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be 

35 gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just con- 
cluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end 
of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may 
not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. 
Angle-worms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where 

40 the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly 
extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to 
that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too 
keen ; and this you may have all to yourself to-day. I would 
advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the 

4 5 ground-nuts, where you see the Johns wort waving. I 
think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods 
you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, 
as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it 
will not be unwise, for \ have found the increase of fair bait 

50 to be very nearly as the squares of the distances. 

Hermit alone. Let me see ; where was I ? Methinks I was 
nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this 
angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing ? If I should soon 
bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet 

55 occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into 
the essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my 
thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any 
good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an 
offer, is it wise to say. We will think of it? My thoughts 

60 have left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What 
was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I 
will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-see ; they may 
fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the 
dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one 

65 opportunity of a kind. 

Poet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon ? I have got just 



Brute Neighbors 333 

thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or 
undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not 
cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite 
too large; 'a shiner may make a meal off one without finding 70 
the skewer. 

Hermit. Well, then, let's be off. Shall we to the Con- 
cord ? There 's good sport there if the water be not too high. 

Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a 
world? Why has man just these species of animals for his 75 
neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this 
crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to 
their best use, for they are all beasts of biirden, in a sense, 
made to carry some portion of our thoughts. 

The mice which haunted my house were not the common so 
ones, which are said to have been introduced into the coun- 
try, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent 
one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. 
When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath 
the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept ss 
out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and 
pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen 
a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would 
run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily 
ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, 90 
which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned 
with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, 
and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which 
held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and 
played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece 95 
of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled 
it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and 
paws, like a fly, and walked away. 

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection 
in a pine which grew against the house. In June the part- 100 
ridge, (Tetrao umhelhis,) which is s6 shy a bird, led her 



334 American Literary Readings 

brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the 
front of my house, clucking and calHng to them Hke a hen, 
and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. 

105 The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal 
from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, 
and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that 
many a traveller has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, 
and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her 

no anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to 
attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. 
The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in 
such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect 
what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, 

115 often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their 
mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your 
approach make them run again and betray themselves. 
You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for 
a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in 

120 my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedi- 
ent to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there 
without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that 
once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one 
accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in 

125 exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are 
not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly 
developed and precocious even than chickens. The remark- 
ably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene 
eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in 

130 them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but 
a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born 
when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The 
woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller does 
not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or 

135 reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, 
and leaves these innocents to "fall a prey to some prowling 
beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves 



Brute Neighbors 335 

which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched 
by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so 
are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers 140 
them again. These were my hens and chickens. 

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free 
though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in 
the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. 
How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be 145 
four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any 
human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the 
raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and 
probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly 
I rested an hoiir or two in the shade at noon, after planting, lao 
and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the 
source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Bris- 
ter's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to 
this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, 
full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the 155 
swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under 
a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to 
sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear 
gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling 
it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day leo 
in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too 
the wood-cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, 
flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran 
in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave 
her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer les 
till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, 
to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would 
already have taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, 
single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard 
the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. 170 
There too the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or fluttered 
from bough to bough of the soft white-pines over my head ; 
or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was 



336 American Literary Readings 

particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still 

175 long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its 
inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. 

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One 
day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of 
stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other 

180 much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely 
contending with one another. Having once got hold they 
never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the 
chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find 
that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it 

185 was not a duellum, but a bsllum, a war between two races of 
ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently 
two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons 
covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the 
ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both 

190 red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever 
witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle 
was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one 
hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every 
side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any 

195 noise that I cpuld hear, and human soldiers never fought so 
resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each 
other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now 
at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or 
life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened 

200 himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all 
the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to 
gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already 
caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger 
black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on 

205 looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his 
members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull- 
dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It 
was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the 
mean while there came along a single red ant on the hill-side 



Brute Neighbors 337 

of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had 210 
despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; 
probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose 
mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. 
Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his 
wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his 215 
Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar, — for 
the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red, — he drew 
near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an 
inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he 
sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his opera- 220 
tions near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to 
select among his own members; and so there were three 
united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been 
invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. 
I should not have wondered by this time to find that they 225 
had their respective musical bands stationed on some 
eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to 
excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was 
myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. 
The more you think of it, the less the difference. And 230 
certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord his- 
tory, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a 
moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers 
engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. 
For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. 235 
Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and 
Luther Blanchard wounded! Why, here every ant was a 
Buttrick, — "Fire! for God's sake fire!" — and thousands 
shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one 
hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle 240 
they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid 
a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle 
will be as important and memorable to those whom it con- 
cerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. 

I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly 246 

12 



338 American Literary Readings 

described were struggling, carried it into my house, and 
placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see 
the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red 
ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the 

250 near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, 
his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had 
there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate 
was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark 
carbuncles of the sufferers' eyes shone with ferocity such as 

255 war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer 
under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier 
had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the 
still living heads were hanging on either side of him like 
ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly 

260 fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble 
struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant 
of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest 
himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, 
he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over 

265 the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally 
survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days 
in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought 
that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I 
never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of 

270 the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my 
feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the 
ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. 

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long 
been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they 

275 say that Huber is the only modem author who appears to 
have witnessed them, ".^neas Sylvius," say they, "after 
giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with 
great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk 
of a pear tree," adds that " 'This action was fought in the 

280 pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of 
Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the 



Brute Neighbors 339 

whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' A 
similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded 
by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, 
are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but 285 
left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This 
event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Chris- 
tiem the Second from Sweden." The battle which I wit- 
nessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years 
before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 290 

Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a 
victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, 
without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled 
at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by 
some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might 295 
still inspire a natural terror in its denizens; — now far behind 
his guide, barking Uke a canine bull toward some small 
squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering 
off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he 
is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. 300 
Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony 
shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. 
The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic 
cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at 
home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy beha-vior, 305 
proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. 
Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in 
the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had 
their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years 
before I lived in the woods there was what was called a 310 
"winged cat" in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest 
the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in 
June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her 
wont, (I am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so 
use the more common pronoun,) but her mistress told me 315 
that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a 
year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; 



340 American Literary Readings 

that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white 
spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy 

320 rail like a fox ; that in the winter the ftir grew thick and flatted 
out along her sides, forming strips ten or twelve inches long 
by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, 
the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the 
spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair 

325 of her "wings," which I keep still. There is no appearance 
of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part 
flying-squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not im- 
possible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have 
been produced by the union of the marten and domestic 

830 cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me to 
keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet's cat 
be winged as well as his horse? 

In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, 
to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with 

335 his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival 
all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on 
foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and 
conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through 
the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. 

340 Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on 
that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent ; if he dive here 
he must come up there. But now the kind October wind 
rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the 
water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes 

345 sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods re- 
sound with their discharges. The waves generously rise 
and dash angrily, taking sides with all waterfowl, and our 
sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfin- 
ished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I 

350 went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently 
saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. 
If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see 
how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be completely 



Brute Neighbors 341 

lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the 
latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him 355 
on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain. 

As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm 
October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on 
to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain 
over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the 36o 
shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his 
wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle 
and he dived, but when he came up again I was nearer than 
before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction 
he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came ses 
to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the inter- 
val; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more 
reason than before. He manoeuvred so cunningly that I 
could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, 
when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and 370 
that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and appar- 
ently chose his course so that he might come up where there 
was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance 
from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his 
mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once 375 
to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from 
it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was 
endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty 
game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man 
against a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disap- sso 
pears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours 
nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he 
would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, 
having apparently passed directly under the boat. So 
long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had 385 
swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, never- 
theless ; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, 
beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way 
like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom 



34? American Literary Readings 

390 of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have 
been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the 
surface, with hooks set for trout, — though Walden is deeper 
than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this un- 
gainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid 

395 their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely 
under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. 
Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the sur- 
face, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly 
dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my 

ioo oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate 
where he would rise; for again and again, when I was strain- 
ing my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be 
startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after 
displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself 

405 the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his 
white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly 
loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the plash of the 
water when he came up, and so also detected him. But 
after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, 

410 and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see 
how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came 
to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet 
beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet 
somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he 

415 had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, 
he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like 
that of a wolf than any bird ; as when a beast puts his muzzle 
to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, 
— perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making 

420 the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed 
in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. 
Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so 
smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I 
did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, 

425 and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At 



Brute Neighbors 343 

length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those 
prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, 
and immediately there came a wind from the east and 
rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, 
and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon 430 
answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him 
disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface. 

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly 
tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the 
sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise 435 
in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would 
sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a 
considerable height, from which they could easily see to 
other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, 
when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they 440 
would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile 
on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside 
safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not 
know, unless they love its water for the same reason that 
I do. 445 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
1819-1891 

James Russell Lowell is usually designated as our Repre- 
sentative Man of Letters. His versatility and originality, 
his successful productions not in one but in many types of 
literature, and his characteristic literary attitude even in his 
moral and political efforts and in his diplomatic and other 
public services, justly entitle him to this designation. 

Lowell was born February 22, 18 19, at "Elmwood," 
another famous old Cambridge house not far from Long- 
fellow's home, "Craigie House." The old Puritan family 
of Lowells belonged to what Holmes called "the Brahmins 
of New England." One member of this family founded the 
city of Lowell and was among the first to introduce the 
manufacture of cotton into this country; another endowed 
"Lowell Institute" in Boston; and his own father, Reverend 
Charles Lowell, was a noted pastor of a Congregational 
church in Boston. It was from his mother, Harriet Spence, 
however, that Lowell inherited his poetic instincts. She 
claimed to be descended from the famous old Scotch sea 
captain. Sir Patrick Spence, of ballad fame. 

In his youth Lowell was surrounded by the best cultural 
influences, and he read deeply in his father's excellent 
library. He was an imaginative child, often confessing to 
have seen visions in his youth, and to have been con- 
stantly accompanied by the medieval characters with whom 
he had become acquainted by reading Spenser's Faerie 
Queene and other imaginative poems and romances. He 
was deeply religious, too. Mr. Ferris Greenslet, his latest 
biographer, says that the two significant influences of the 
poet's early life were "his love for the outdoor world at 
Elmwood, and his equally strong love for the indoor world 
of literature." Mr. Greenslet also makes much of the 
mystical element in Lowell's nature. 

It was but natural for Lowell to go to Harvard when he 
was ready to enter college, for his father had graduated there 
before him, and all his native and local inclinations led him 
to that institution. He did not make a good record, for he 
read everything, he says, but those books which would have 

[344] 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



James Russell Lowell , 345 

advanced his academic standing. He was one of the 
cleverest wits in his class, however, and like Emerson and 
Holmes, he was chosen class poet. Just two weeks before 
he was graduated, the authorities of the college rusticated 
him as a punishment for his continued neglect of his academic 
duties. He spent two rather dreary weeks at Concord, and 
in spite of the facts that he met Emerson and Thoreau here 
and had time to compose and polish up his class poem, he 
confessed to a lifelong feeling of dislike for the famous old 
village. He was allowed to return to Harvard in time for 
graduation, but not in time to read his class poem. 

Like several others of our literary men, Lowell first turned 
to the law for a livelihood. He took the Bachelor of Laws 
degree at Harvard and went so f ai* as to enter a law office to 
practice. About this time (1840) he met and became 
engaged to Maria White, a beautiful and accomplished 
young woman, and her influence on him finally determined 
his life career. She was a great lover of poetry and a strong 
adherent of the cause of abolition. Lowell began now to 
write stirring articles for the abolition journals and attractive 
poems for the Southern Literary Messenger and other literary 
magazines. His first volume of verse, A Year's Life, came 
out in 1 84 1, the most notable individual poems in it being 
those addressed to his prospective wife. 

Encouraged by the reception of his literary efforts, Lowell 
decided to abandon the law and devote himself to literature. 
He attempted to form a literary journal. The Pioneer, but 
this venture failed after a brief career. At the end of 1843 
a collected edition of his poems appeared and was received 
with great favor by the public. In 1844, with the success 
of this volume and the additional income from his contribu- 
tions to the magazines and from his popular lectures, Lowell 
was enabled to marry. He had secured a position, too, as 
editorial writer for the Pennsylvania Freeman, a journal at 
one time edited by Whittier. His fame grew, and he gradu- 
ally became one of the leading literary men of his time. He 
was continually flashing forth with some fiery lyric on topics 
of the day, or quietly publishing some exquisite personal or 
nature poem. For example, in 1844, during the heated 
discussion of the slavery question in connection with the 
admission of Texas to the Union, he produced "The Present 
Crisis," a stirring ode written in the long trochaic meter 
of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall." It caught the public ear 



346 , American Literary Readings 

and was used many times in addresses by men of national 
fame during the long period of discussion preceding the Civil 
War. In spite of its topical character, it contains some 
fine thoughts and notable passages, such as, 

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;" 

"Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own;" 

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient Good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth." 

This betrays the moralist and the Puritan in Lowell's nature, 
but in spite of its preaching tone and the local or circum- 
scribed theme, the noble sincerity and fiery passion of the 
poem lift it clearly into the realm of art. 

The year 1848 has been called Lowell's annus mirahilis, 
or year of wonders. Besides many essays and fugitive 
poems, he published during this year a new volume of poems, 
chiefly lyrical, the famous Biglow Papers, First Series, the 
clever satire "A Fable for Critics," and chief of all "The 
Vision of Sir Launfal." The Biglow Papers were cast 
in the homely New England dialect, and for shrewdness, 
Yankee common-sense, sparkling wit, and keen political 
satire, we have nothing in our literature to compare with 
the combined First Series (1848), dealing with the Mexican 
War, and the Second Series (1866), dealing with the Civil 
War. These pieces, begun in a spirit of humor as a light 
newspaper contribution to the political discussion of the time, 
brought Lowell national and even international fame, and 
placed him securely in the first rank of American humorists. 
They are composed partly in prose and partly in verse, and 
purport to be mainly poetical productions of Hosea Biglow 
of Jaalam, with introductory letters mainly by Parson 
Homer Wilbur. The poems were copied and quoted widely, 
and some of them, notably "What Mr. Robinson Thinks," 
became almost as popular as a byword during the period 
immediately following their appearance. Of course dialect 
poems of this character, being chiefly satirical and largely, 
made up of local allusions and topical material, cannot be 
expected to retain popular favor for many decades; but so 
sprightly is the humor, so original and fresh the conception 



James Russell Lowell 347 

of both character and incident, and so permanent the under- 
lying moral truth, that the Biglow Papers will always retain 
a fresh interest for students of our native language and 
literature. And at least one poem, "The Courtin'," pro- 
duced not as an integral part of the Biglow Papers but 
under the same impulse, is destined, because of its more 
human and universal appeal, to retain its place much longer 
in popular esteem as a standard humorous lyric. 

It is needless to speak of "A Fable for Critics" and "The 
Vision of Sir Launfal" here, since both these are more fully 
treated in the notes to this volume ; but we cannot pass with- 
out saying that each of these is supreme of its kind. The 
first is a literary satire, full of racy humor and keen criticism; 
the second is a narrative poem in ode form, usually con- 
sidered the masterpiece of Lowell's poetic genius. 

Among the later poems by Lowell the "Commemoration 
Ode," read in 1865 at the Harvard services in commemora- 
tion of her sons who fell in the Civil War, is the most notable. 
The tribute to Lincoln beginning "And such was he, our 
Martyr Chief," and the magnificent patriotic conclusion 
beginning "O Beautiful! my Country!" have been singled 
out by discerning critics as the high.-water mark not only of 
Lowell's poetry, but of America's. "Under the Willows" 
(1868), "The Cathedral" (1869), "Agassiz" (1876), and 
"Under the Old Elm" (1875) are also worthy of special 
mention among Lowell's longer and more serious poems. 
The last named poem celebrates the Old Elm under which 
Washington took command of the Revolutionary Army, and 
contains a notable tribute to the great soldier and statesman. 

In 1856 Lowell, who had already for some years been 
lecturing on literature at Lowell Institute in Boston, suc- 
ceeded Longfellow in the Smith Professorship of Spanish 
and Italian at Harvard. He held this position for seventeen 
years and earned the distinction of being a most charming 
and inspiring lecturer. He had a sort of conversational 
style of teaching which his pupils said was delightful. In 
fact, Lowell was a remarkable conversationalist and letter- 
writer all his life. It is said that he was the finest talker 
not only in America but in England during his time, and 
his two volumes of Letters edited by his friend Charles 
Eliot Norton are charming in every respect. It was in 
this year that Lowell, his first wife having been dead several 
years, married Miss Frances Dunlap, a beautiful young 



348 American Literary Readings 

woman of excellent family who was at this time the governess 
of his daughter. It was in this year, too, that the Atlantic 
Monthly was founded with Lowell as its first editor. With 
the assistance of the principal literary men of New England, 
Lowell made of this journal what it has since continued to 
be, — our chief literary magazine. Later (1S63) he became 
editorially connected with the North American Review. 

During these years Lowell's fame as an essayist and critic 
was continually growing. His collected volumes of prose 
include Fireside Travels (1864), Among My Books, First 
and Second Series (1870, 1876), My Study Windows (187 1), 
Democracy and Other Addresses (1886), and Latest Literary 
Essays and Addresses (1892). These works unquestionably 
place Lowell first among our critical essayists. With his 
keen insight, fine literary judgment and taste, exuberant 
humor, and scintillating wit, he makes subjects ordinarily 
dry and uninteresting exceedingly entertaining and enlight- 
ening. He has something fresh and new to say even when 
he treats familiar subjects like Shakespeare, Spenser, Chau- 
cer, Dryden. The best of his outdoor essays are "My 
Garden Acquaintance" and "A Good Word for Winter"; 
and his address on " Democracy," delivered at Birmingham, 
England, in 1884, is a notable analysis of our national 
ideals. All Lowell's essays, however, are full of subtleties, 
minute literary allusions, and fanciful and humorous touches, 
hence are rather difficult for young readers. 

In 1877 Lowell was appointed foreign minister at Madrid, 
and in 1880 he was promoted to be minister to England, the 
most distinguished post in our foreign diplomatic service. It 
is said that he was up to this time the most popular ambas- 
sador America had sent to the Court of Saint James. He 
was called on for all sorts of addresses, and many honors 
were heaped upon him. He returned to America in 1885, 
and though his life was now saddened by the loss of his 
second wife, he continued to write until his death in 1891. 
He was buried near Longfellow in Mount Auburn Cemetery, 
Cambridge, almost within sight of the old family home in 
which he was born. 

(The standard life of Lowell is that by Horace E. Scudder in two 
volumes; Ferris Greenslet's life is a delightful shorter study; and The 
Letters, edited by Charles E. Norton in two volumes, give a still more 
intimate knowledge of the poet's literary and personal connections.) 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

PART FIRST 

Prelude 

Over his keys the musing organist, 

Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay; 
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme. 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. 

Not only around our infancy 

Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot. 
We Sinais climb, and know it not; 
Over our manhood bend the skies ; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies; 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite ; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us: 
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in. 

The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us. 
We bargain for the graves we lie in ; 

At the Devil's booth are all things sold, 

Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 
For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 

[349I 



350 American Literary Readings 

Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking: 

'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
There is no price set on the lavish summer, 
And June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmtir, or see it glisten ; 
Every clod feels a stir of might. 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, grasping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green. 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chaUce, 
And there 's never a leaf or a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 
And lets his illimiined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings. 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings ; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best? 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 
I Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 



The Vision of Sir Launjal 351 

Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it, 
We are happy now tjecause God so wills it ; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell; ^ 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing ; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing. 
That the river is bluer than the sky. 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back. 
For other couriers we should not lack; 

We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing, — 
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 

Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now. 

Everything is upward striving; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,— 

'T is the natural way of living: 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 

In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake ; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 

The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 

And the sulphiirous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 

Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 1 



352 American Literary Readings 

Part First 
I 
" My golden spurs now bring to me, 

And bring to me my richest mail, 
For to-morrow I go over land and sea 

Jn search of the Holy Grail; 
Shall never a bed for me be spread, 
Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 
Till I begin my vow to keep ; 
Here on the rushes will I sleep. 
And perchance there may come a vision true 
Ere day create the world anew." 

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 

Slumber fell like a cloud on him. 
And into his soul the vision flew. 

II 
The crows flapped over by twos and threes. 
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees. 

The little birds sang as if it were 

The one day of summer in all the year. 
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees: 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray ; 
'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be. 
Save to lord or lady of high degree; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 
She could not scale the chilly wall. 
Though around it for leagues her pavilions tall 
Stretched left and right. 
Over the hills and out of sight ; 

Green and broad was every tent. 

And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 



The Vision of Sir Launjal 353 

III 
The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight. 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall 

In his siege of three hundred summers long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf. 

Had cast them forth: so, young and strong, 
And lightsome as a locust -leaf. 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail. 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 

IV 

It was morning on hill and stream and tree. 
And morning in the young knight's heart; 

Only the castle moodily 

Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free. 
And gloomed by itself apart ; 

The season brimmed all other things up 

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 

V 

As Sir Launfal made mom through the darksome gate, 

He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same. 
Who begged with his hand" and moaned as he sate; 

And a loathing over Sir Launfal came, 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 

The flesh 'neath his armor did shrink and crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer mom, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 



354 American Literary Readings 

VI 

The leper raised not the gold from the dust : 
" Better to me the poor man's crust, 
Better the blessing of the poor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door, 
That is no true alms which the hand can hold ; 
He gives nothing but worthless gold 

Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight. 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms. 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness before." 

PART SECOND 
Prelude 
Down swept the chill wind from the mountain peak. 

From the snow five thousand summers old; 
On open wold and hill-top bleak 

It had gathered all the cold. 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's cheek; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare ; 
The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter-proof; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his beams ; 
Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
As the lashes of light that trim the stars; 
He sculptured every summer delight 
In his halls and chambers out of sight ; 
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 



The Vision of Sir Launjal 355 

Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
Bending to counterfeit a breeze ; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew; 
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf ; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
For the gladness of heaven to shine through, 

and here 
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond drops, 
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one : 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 
'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 
In his depths serene through the summer day. 
Each flitting shadow of earth and sky, 

Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 

By the elfin bmlders of the frost. 

Within the hall are song and laughter. 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide ; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind ; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 
And swift little troops of silent sparks. 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in feaf, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 



225 



3S6 American Literary Readings 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 
Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was — "Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 

The voice of the seneschal flared like a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the porch. 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle did. 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 

Part Second 
I 
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
The river was dumb and could not speak. 

For the frost's swift shuttles its shroud had spun; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun; 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold. 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 

II 
Sir Launf al turned from his own hard gate. 
For another heir in his earldom sate; 
An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 
Little he recked of his earldom's loss. 
No more on his surcoat was blazoned the cross, 



The Vision of Sir Launfal 357 

But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
The badge of the suffering and the poor. 

Ill 

Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 

Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 

For it was just at the Christmas time; 

So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 

And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 

In the light and warmth of long ago; 

He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 

O'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 

Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one. 

He can cotmt the camels in the sun. 

As over the red-hot sands they pass 

To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 

The little spring laughed and leapt in the shade, 

And with its own self like an infant played. 

And waved its signal of palms. 

IV 

"For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms"; — 

The happy camels may reach the spring, 

But Sir Launfal sees naught save the grev/some thing, 

The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 

That cowered beside him, a thing as lone 

And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 

In the desolate horror of his disease. 



And Sir Launfal said, — "I behold in thee 

An image of Him who died on the tree; 

Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, — 

Thou also hast had the world's buffets and scorns, - 

And to thy life were not denied 

The wounds in the hands and feet and side : 



358 American Literary Readings 

Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
Behold, through him, I give to Thee!" 



VI 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 

And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway he 
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 

He had flung an alms to leprosie. 
When he caged his young life up in gilded mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
He parted in twain his single crust, 
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink; 
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 

'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 

And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty soul. 

VII 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 

A light shone round about the place; 

The leper no longer crouched at his side, 

But stood before him glorified. 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful Gate, — 

Himself the Gate whereby men can 

Enter the temple of God in Man. 

VIII 

His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine. 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon ; 
And the voice that was calmer than silence said, 
"Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 



The Vision of Sir Launfal 359 

In many climes, without avail, 

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail; 

behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 

Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now ; 

This crust is my body broken for thee, 

This water His blood that died on the tree; 

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 

In whatso we share with another's need, — 

Not that which we give, but what we share, — 

For the gift without the giver is bare ; 

Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three, 

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

IX 

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — 
"The Grail in my castle here is found! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall. 
Let it be the spider's banquet -hall ; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 

X 

The castle-gate stands open now. 

And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough ; 

No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 
When the first poor outcast went in at the door. 
She entered with him in disguise, 
And mastered the fortress by surprise ; 
There is no spot she loves so well on ground. 
She lingers and smiles there the whole year round; 
The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
Has hall and bower at his command ; 
And there's no poor man in the North Countree 
But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 



360 American Literary Readings 

THE COURTIN' 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 
Fiir 'z you can look or listen, 

Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, 
All silence an' all glisten. 

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 

An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 
I With half a cord o' wood in — 

There war n't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a puddin'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 
Towards the pootiest, bless her, 
\ An' leetle flames danced all about 

The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung. 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 
I Fetched back from Concord busted. 

The very room, coz she was in. 
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

5 'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 

On sech a blessed cretur, 
A dogrose blushin' to a brook 
Ain't modester nor sweeter. 



The Courtin' 361 

He was six foot o' man, A i, 

Clear grit an' human natur' ; 
None could n't quicker pitch a ton 

Nor dror a furrer straighter. 

He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals, 
He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em. 

Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 

All crinkly like curled maple. 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 

Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir; 
My ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, 

She knowed the Lord was nigher. 

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 

When her new meetin'-bunnet 
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 

O' blue eyes sot upon it. 

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some! 

She seemed to 've gut a new soul. 
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, 

Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in bumt-up paper. 

He kin' o' I'itered on the mat. 
Some doubtfle o' the sekle. 



362 American Literary Readings 

His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 
But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away Hke murder. 

"You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" 
""Wal .... no ... . I come dasignin' "- 

"To see my Ma? She is sprinkHn' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'. " 

To say why gals acts so or so, 

Or don't, 'ould be presumin' ; 
Mebby to mean yes an' say no 

Comes nateral to women. 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 

Then stood a spell on t' other, 
An' on which one he felt the wust 

He could n't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he, "I'd better call agin" ; 

Says she, "Think likely, Mister"; 
Thet last word pricked him like a pin. 

An' .... Wal, he up an' kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes. 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

For she was jes' the quiet kind 

Whose naturs never vary. 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 

Snowhid in Jenooary. 



A Fable for Critics 363 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued * 

Too tight for all expressin', 90 

Tell mother see how metters stood, 
An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they was cried 95 

In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 

A FABLE FOR CRITICS 

"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one. 
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on, 
Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows, 
Is some of it pr — No, 't is not even prose; 
I 'm speaking of metres; some poems have welled 5 

From those rare depths of soul that have ne'er been excelled; 
They 're not epics, but that does n't matter a pin. 
In creating, the only hard thing 's to begin ; 
A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an oak ; 
If you've once found the way, you've achieved the grand 10 

stroke ; 
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter. 
But thrown in a heap with a crush and a clatter; 
Now it is not one thing nor another alone 
Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, 
The something pervading, uniting the whole, is 

The before unconceived, unconceivable soul. 
So that just in removing this trifle or that, you 
Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; 
Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be. 
But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don't make a tree. 20 

"But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way, 
I believe we left waiting), — his is, we may say. 



364 American Literary Readings 

A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range 

Has Ol3nnpus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange; 
25 He seems, to my thinking (although I'm afraid 

The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), 

A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian's gold mist 

And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; 

All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he 's got 
30 To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what; 

For though he builds glorious temples, 't is odd 

He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. 

'T is refreshing to old-fashioned people like me 

To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 
35 In whose mind all creation is duly respected 

As parts of himself — just a little projected; 

And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun, 

A convert to — nothing but Emerson. 

So perfect a balance there is in his head, 
40 That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; 

Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort. 

He looks at as merely ideas; in short. 

As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, 

Of such vast extent that oiu" earth's a mere dab in it; 
45 Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, 

Namely, one part ptire earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; 

You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, 

Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion, 

With the quiet precision of science he'll sort 'em 
so But you can't help suspecting the whole a post mortem. . . . 



"There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified. 
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 
Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' nights 
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 
55 He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation 
(There 's no doubt that he stands in supreme ice-olation). 



A Fable for Critics . 365 

Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on, 

But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on, — 

He 's too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on : 

Unqualified merits, I '11 grant, if you choose, he has 'em, eo 

But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm; 

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 

Like being stirred up with the very North Pole. 

"He is very nice reading in stimmer, but inter 
Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; 05 

Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is, 
When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices. 
But, deduct all you can, there 's enough that 's right good 

in him, 
He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him; 
And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is, 70 
Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities — 
To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet? 
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite. 
If you 're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis, 
You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece; 75 
But you'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice. 
And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain, 
If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain. 
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, 
Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, so 

Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth 
May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd 's worth. 
No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant; 
But, my friends, you '11 endanger the life of your client. 
By attempting to stretch him up into a giant: .... ss 

"But, my dear little bardlings, don't prick up your ears 
Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers; 
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
There is nothing in that which is grand in its way; 



366 . American Literary Readings 

90 He is almost the one of your poets that knows 
How much grace, strength, and dignity He in Repose; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too far; 
'T would be well if your authors should all make a trial 

95 Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial. 
And measure their writings by Hesiod's staff, 
Which teaches that all has less value than half. 



"There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart 
Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, 

100 And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, 
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; 
There was ne'er a man bom who had more of the swing 
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing; 
And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it) 

105 From the very same cause that has made him a poet, — 
A fervor of mind which knows no separation 
'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration, 
As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing 
If 't were I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing; 

1 1 Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction 
And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, 
While, borne 'with, the rush of the metre along. 
The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 
Content with the whirl and delirium of song; 

115 Then his grammar's not always correct, nor his rhymes. 
And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes. 
Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats 
When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, 
And can ne'er be repeated again any more 

120 Than they could have been carefully plotted before: 
Like old what 's-his-name there at the battle of Hastings 
(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), 
Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 



A Fable for Critics 367 

For reform and whatever they call human rights, 
Both singing and striking in front of the war, 
And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor; 
Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, 
Vestis Jilii tut, O leather-clad Fox? 
Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din. 
Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in 
To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin. 
With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly's spring 
Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling? 

"All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard. 
Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave 
When to look but a protest in silence was brave ; 
All honor and praise to the women and men 
Who spoke out for the dirmb and the down-trodden then ! . . . 



"There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare no 
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; 
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet. 
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 
'T is as if a rough oak that for ages had stood, us 

With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of the wood. 
Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and scathe, 
With a single anemone trembly and rathe; 
His strength is so tender, his wildness so meek, 
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek, — 150 

He's a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck; 
When Nature was shaping him, clay was not granted 
For making so full-sized a man as she wanted. 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman prepared, 155 

And she could not have hit a more excellent plan 
For making him fully and perfectly man 



368 American Literary Readings 

"Here's Cooper, who's written six volumes to show 
He's as good as a lord: well, let's grant that he's so; 

160 If a person prefer that description of praise. 
Why, a coronet's certainly cheaper than bays; 
But he need take no pains to convince us he's not 
(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 
Choose any twelve men, and let C. read aloud 

165 That one of his novels of which he's most proud. 
And I 'd lay any bet that, without ever quitting 
Their box, they'd be all, to a man, for acquitting. 
He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, 
One wildflower he's plucked that is wet with the dew 

170 Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing not to mince, 
He \ has done naught but copy it ill ever since; 
His Indians, with proper respect be it said. 
Are just Natty Bumpo, daubed over with red. 
And his very Long Toms are the same useful Nat, 

175 Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'wester hat 

(Though once in a Coffin, a good chance was found 
To have slipped the old fellow away underground) . 
All his other men-figures are clothes upon sticks, 
The derniere chemise of a man in a fix 

180 (As a captain besieged, when his garrison's small, 
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the wall); 
And the women he draws from one model don't vary, 
All sappy as maples and fiat as a prairie. 
When a character's wanted, he goes to the task 

185 As a cooper would do in composing a cask; 

He picks out the staves, of their qualities heedful, 
Just hoops them together as tight as is needful, 
And, if the best fortune should crown the attempt, he 
Has made at the most something wooden and empty. 

190 "Don't suppose I would underrate Cooper's abilities; 
If I thought you'd do that, I should feel very ill at ease; 
The men who have given to one character life 



A Fable jor Critics 369 

And objective existence are not very rife; 

You may number them all, both prose-writers and singers, 

Without overrunning the bounds of your fingers, 195 

And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 

Than Adams the parson or Primrose the vicar 

"There comes Poe, with his raven, like Bamaby Rudge, 
Three fifths of him genius arid two fifths sheer fudge. 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pentameters, 200 

In a way to make people of common sense damn metres, 
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind. 
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind, 
Who — But hey-day! What 's this? Messieurs Mathews 

and Poe, 
You must n't fling mud-balls at Longfellow so, 205 

Does it make a man worse that his character 's such 
As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much ? 
Why, there is not a bard at this moment alive 
More willing than he that his fellows should thrive; 
While you are abusing him thus, even now 210 

He woiild help either one of you out of a slough; 
You may say that he 's smooth and all that till you 're hoarse, 
But remember that elegance also is force; 
After polishing granite as much as you will, 
The heart keeps its tough old persistency still; 215 

Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at bay; 
Why, he'll Hve till men weary of Collins and Gray. 
I'm not over-fond of Greek metres in English, 
To me rhyme's a gain, so it be not too jinglish. 
And your modem hexameter verses are no more 220 

Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is like Homer; ■ 
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon is. 
So, compared to your modems, sounds old Melesigenes; 
I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, o't is 
That I 've heard the old blind man recite his own rhapsodies, 225 
And my ear with that music impregnate may be. 



370 American Literary Readings 

Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of the sea, 
Or as one can't bear Strauss when his nature is cloven 
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven; 

230 But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I speak, 
Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 
I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change 

Hne 
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. 
That's not ancient nor modem, its place is apart 

235 Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art, 
'T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life 



"What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine 
brain. 
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain, 

240 And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there 
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; 
Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching, — 
I sha 'n't run directly against my own preaching, 
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes, 

245 Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes; 
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel, — 
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele, 
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill, 
With the whole of that partnership's stock and good-will, 

250 Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, 

• The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, 
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain, 
That only the finest and clearest remain. 
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives 

255 From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green 
leaves. 
And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving 
A name either EngHsh or Yankee, — just Irving 



A Fable for Critics 371 

"There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; 
A Ley den- jar always full-charged, from which flit 
The electrical tingles of hit after hit; 
In long poems 'tis painful sometimes, and invites 
A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, 
Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully 
As if you got more than you'd title to rightfully, 
And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning 
Would flame in for a second and give you a fright 'ning. 
He has perfect sway of what / call a sham metre, 
But many admire it, the English pentameter, 
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse. 
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, 
Nor e'er achieved aught in't so worthy of praise 
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. 
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's New Timon ; — 
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, 
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, 
He could ne'er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. 
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric 
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric 
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes 
That are trodden upon are yoiu^ own or your foes'. 



"There is Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme. 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, 
But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders. 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 285 

Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching; 
His l3n-e has some chords that would ring pretty well, 
But he'd rather by half make a dnrni of the shell, 
And rattle away till he's old as Methusalem, 
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem "290 



372 American Literary Readings 

"OUR LITERATURE" 

RESPONSE TO A TOAST AT THE BANQUET IN NEW YORK, APRIL 30, 
1889, GIVEN IN COMMEMORATION OF THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 
OF WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION. 

A needful frugality, benignant alike to both the partici- 
pants in human utterance, has limited the allowance of each 
speaker this evening to ten minutes. Cut in thicker slices, 
our little loaf of time would not sufhce for all. This seems a 
5 meagre ration, but if we give to our life the Psalmist's 
measure of seventy years, and bear in mind the population 
of the globe, a little ciphering will show that no single man 
and brother is entitled even to so large a share of our atten- 
tion as this. Moreover, how few are the men in any gener- 
ic ation who could not deliver the message with which their 
good .or evil genius has charged them in less than the sixth 
part of an hour. 

On an occasion like this, a speaker lies more than usually 
open to the temptation of seeking the acceptable rather than 
15 the judicial word. And yet it is inevitable that public 
anniversaries, like those of private persons, should suggest 
self-criticism as well as self-satisfaction. I shall not listen for 
such suggestions, though I may not altogether conceal that 
I am conscious of them. I am to speak for literature, and of 
20 our own as forming now a recognized part of it. This is not 
the place for critical balancing of what we have done or left 
undone in this field. An exaggerated estimate and, that 
indiscriminateness of praise which implies a fear to speak 
the truth, would be unworthy of myself or of you. I might 
25 indeed read over a list of names now, alas, carven on head- 
stones, since it would be invidious to speak of the living. 
But the list would be short, and I could call few of the names 
great as the impartial years measure greatness. I shall 
prefer to assume that American literature was not worth 
30 speaking for at all if it were not quite able to speak for itself, 
as all others are expected to do. 

I think this a commemoration in which it is peculiarly 



"Our Literature" 373 

fitting that literature should take part. For we are cele- 
brating to-day our true birthday as a nation, the day 
when our consciousness of wider interests and larger possi- 35 
bilities began. All that went before was birth-throes. The 
day also recalls us to a sense of something to which we are too 
indifferent. I mean that historic continuity, which, as a 
factor in moulding national individuality, is not only power- 
ful in itself, but cumulative in its operation. . In one of these 40 
literature finds the soil, and in the other the climate, it 
needs. Without the stimulus of a national consciousness, 
no literature could have come into being; under the con- 
ditions in which we then were, none that was not parasitic 
and dependent. Without the continuity which slowly incor- 45 
porates that consciousness in the general life and thought, 
no literature could have acquired strength to detach itself 
and begin a life of its own. And here another thought 
suggested by the day comes to my mind. Since that pre- 
cious and persuasive quality, style, may be exemplified as so 
truly in a life as in a work of art, may not the character of the 
great man whose memory decorates this and all our days, in 
its dignity, its strength, its calm of passion restrained, its 
inviolable reserves, furnish a lesson which our literature may 
study to great advantage? And not our literature alone. 55 

Scarcely had we become a nation when the only part of the 
Old World whose language we understood began to ask in 
various tones of despondency where was our literature. We 
could not improvise Virgils or Miltons, though we made 
an obliging effort to do it. Failing in this, we thought eo 
the question partly unfair and wholly disagreeable. And 
indeed it had never been put to several nations far older 
than we, and to which a vates sacer had been longer wanting. 
But, perhaps it was not altogether so ill-natured as it seemed, 
for, after all, a nation without a literature is imperfectly e 5 
represented in the parliament of mankind. It implied, 
therefore, in our case the obligation of an illustrious blood. 

With a language in compass and variety inferior to none 



374 American Literary Readings 

that has ever been the instrument of human thought or 

70 passion or sentiment, we had inherited also the forms and 
precedents of a hterature altogether worthy of it. But 
these forms and precedents we were to adapt suddenly to 
novel conditions, themselves still in solution, tentative, 
formless, atom groping after atom, rather through blind 

75 instinct than with conscious purpose. Why wonder if our 
task proved as long as it was difficult? And it was all the 
more difficult that we were tempted to free ourselves from the 
form as well as from the spirit. And we had other notable 
hindrances. Our reading class was small, scattered thinly 

80 along the seaboard, and its wants were fully supplied from 
abroad, either by importation or piracy. Communication 
was tedious and costly. Our men of letters, or rather our 
men with a natural impulsion to a life of letters, were few and 
isolated, and I cannot recollect that isolation has produced 

85 anything in literature better than monkish chronicles, 
except a Latin hymn or two, and one precious book, the 
treasure of bruised spirits. Criticism there was none, and 
what assumed its function was half provincial self-conceit, 
half patriotic resolve to find swans in birds of quite another 

90 species. Above all, we had no capital toward which all the 
streams of moral and intellectual energy might converge to 
fill a reservoir on which all could draw. There were many 
careers open to ambition, all of them more tempting and 
more gainful than the making of books. Our people were of 

95 necessity largely intent on material ends, and our accessions 
from Europe tended to increase this predisposition. Con- 
sidering all these things, it is a wonder that in these hundred 
years we should have produced any literature at all; a still 
greater wonder that we have produced so much of which we 
100 may be honestly proud. Its English descent is and must 
always be manifest, but it is ever more and more informed 
■ with a new spirit, more and more trustful in the guidance 
of its own thought. But if we would have it become all 
that we would have it be, we must beware of judging it by a 



, "Our Literature" 375 

comparison with its own unripe self alone.' We must not 105 
cuddle it into weakness or wilfulness by over-indulgence. 
It would be more profitable to think that we have as yet no 
literature in the highest sense than to insist that what we 
have should be judged by other than admitted standards, 
merely because it is ours. In these art matches we must no 
not only expect but rejoice to be pitted against the doughtiest 
wrestlers, and the lightest-footed runners of all countries 
and of all times. 

Literature has been put somewhat low on the list of toasts, 
doubtless in deference to necessity of arrangement, put per- 115 
haps the place assigned to it here may be taken as roughly 
indicating that which it occupies in the general estimation. 
And yet I venture to claim for it an influence, whether for 
good or evil, more durable and more widely operative than 
that exerted by any other form in which human genius has 120 
found expression. As the special distinction of man is 
speech, it should seem that there can be no higher achieve- 
ment of civilized men, no proof more conclusive that they 
are civilized men, than the power of moulding words into 
such fair and noble forms as shall people the human mind 125 
forever with images that refine, console, and inspire. It is 
no vain superstition that has made the name of Homer sacred 
to all who love a bewitchingly simple and yet ideal picture 
of our human life in its doing and its suffering. And there 
are books which have kept alive and transmitted the spark 130 
of soul that has resuscitated nations. It is an old wives' 
tale that Virgil was a great magician, yet in that tale 
survives a witness of the influence which made him, through 
Dante, a main factor in the revival of Italy after the one had 
been eighteen and the other five centuries in their graves, us 

I am not insensible to the wonder and exhilaration of a 
material growth without example in rapidity and expansion, 
but I am also not insensitive to the grave perils latent in any 
civilization which allows its chief energies and interests to 
be wholly absorbed in the pursuit of a mundane prosperity, uo 



376 American Literary Readings 

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart 
cheer thee in the days of thy youth: but know thou, that 
for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." 
I admire our energy, our enterprise, our inventiveness, our 

145 multiplicity of resource, no man more; but it is by less vis- 
ibly remunerative virtues, I persist in thinking, that nations 
chiefly live and feel the higher meaning of their lives. 
Prosperous we may be in other ways, contented with more 
specious successes, but that nation is a mere horde supply- 

15 ing figures to the census which does not acknowledge a truer 
prosperity and a richer contentment in the things of the 
mind. Railways and telegraphs reckoned by the thousand 
miles are excellent things in their way, but I doubt whether 
it be of their poles and sleepers that the rounds are made 

155 of that ladder by which men or nations scale the cliffs whose 
inspiring obstacle interposes itself between them and the 
fulfillment of their highest purpose and function. 

The literature of a people should be the record of its joys 
and sorrows, its aspirations and its shortcomings, its wisdom 

160 and its folly, the confidant of its soul. We cannot say that 
our own as yet suffices us, but I believe that he who stands, 
a hundred years hence, where I am standing now, conscious 
that he speaks to the most powerful and prosperous com- 
munity ever devised or developed by man, will speak of our 

165 literature with the assurance of one who beholds what we 
hope for and aspire after, become a reality and a possession 
forever. 




From a rare lithograph portrait made in 1859 fty F . J. Fisher, 
now in possession of the Westmoreland Club, Richmond, Va. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

1 809 - 1 849 

Edgar Allan Poe, though descended on his father's side 
from a distinguished Maryland family, once called himself 
a Bostonian because he was bom in the city of Boston; 
but he was reared in the South, and he usually designated 
himself as a southerner, and he is generally so regarded. 
His genius, however, knew no restrictions of territory; in 
fact, Poe is perhaps the most universally detached of all 
our poets. His father, David Poe, was educated for the law, 
but a predilection for the stage led him to join a traveling 
theatrical troupe before he had built up a practice. In 
this troupe he met Mrs. CD. Hopkins, an actress of English 
extraction, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Arnold. 
Shortly after the death of Mr. Hopkins, who was manager 
of the company, David Poe married the widow. Of the three 
children — two boys and a girl — born to David and Elizabeth 
Arnold Poe, Edgar was the second son. 

The life of these strolling actors was a hard one. The 
family was forced to travel from city to city in order to 
earn a livelihood which was at best precarious. It seems 
that the mother was depended upon to support the family, 
for David Poe was not a successful actor. Mrs. Poe was 
filling an engagement in Boston at the time of Edgar's 
birth, January tg, 1809. Her husband died about 18 10, 
and in 181 1 she found herself in the city of Richmond, 
Virginia, helpless and stricken with illness. An appeal in 
the Richmond newspapers brought such material relief 
as could be offered: but Mrs. Poe was beyond human aid, 
and within a few days she died. The children, thus left 
alone, were cared for by various persons. Edgar had 
attracted the attention of Mrs. John Allan, the wife of a 
well-to-do tobacco merchant, and he was taken into her 
childless home and rechristened Edgar Allan Poe. 

The boy was an extremely bright and handsome child, 
and his precocity attracted much attention. Mr. and 
Mrs. Allan became devotedly attached to their ward and 
lavished on him all that partiality could suggest or wealth 
supply. In 1815 Mr. Allan moved temporarily to England, 

[377] 



378 American Literary Readings 

to establish there a branch house for his firm. Edgar, 
who accompanied his foster parents, attended an EngHsh 
boarding school near London. In the story of "William 
Wilson" Poe gives many reminiscences of his school life 
there. After five years in England the Allans returned 
to Richmond, and Edgar was placed in a private school. 
In 1826 he was sent to the University of Virginia. Here 
he made a brilliant record in the languages and in mathe- 
matics, but he indulged in drinking and gambling and was 
removed from the university within a year. 

Then began the period of wandering and unhappiness 
brought about by his perverse disposition. Mr. Allan, 
whose patience had already been sorely tried, took Poe into 
his office, feeling it would be better for the boy to earn his 
own living; whereupon Poe, who was now about eighteen 
years old, left home to seek his fortune in Boston. Here 
he succeeded in getting a publisher for his first slender 
volume of verses, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827, but 
little is known of his movements during the time he was in 
Boston. 

The next we hear of Poe, he has enlisted, under the 
assumed name of Edgar A. Perry, as a private in the United 
States Army. He remained in the army for nearly two 
years, being promoted to the post of sergeant major. Part 
of the time he was stationed at the arsenal of Fort Moultrie, 
on an island in Charleston Harbor. Here he gained the 
local color for his famous story, "The Gold Bug," written 
some years later. Poe now began to feel the folly of his 
breach with his foster parents, and on hearing that Mrs. 
Allan was critically ill he made application for a permit to 
visit Richmond, in order that he might see her before her 
death. A partial reconciliation followed between him and 
Mr. Allan, who secured Poe's release from the army, and 
with the aid of influential friends obtained for him an 
appointment to the United States Military Academy at 
West Point. But the perversity of the young man's nature 
again asserted itself, and in less than a year he began to 
tire of life at West Point. He deliberately neglected his 
duties until he had accumulated demerits enough to cause 
his dismissal. 

Before he entered West Point, another edition of his 
poems, containing some new matter, had been published; 
and in 1831 still another was brought out. This volume 



Edgar Allan Poe 379 

contained the first draft of some -of Poe's most famous 
poems, notably "To Helen" and "Israfel." 

Mr. Allan had married again by this time, and Poe, 
finding that he had no longer any hope of a reconciliation 
with his foster parent, now turned to his father's relatives 
for help and sympathy. He made various attempts to 
secure employment, but was unsuccessful. In 1833 he won 
with his "MS. Found in a Bottle" the hundred-dollar 
prize offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor for the best 
short story submitted. Poe sent in several stories and poems, 
and won two prizes, the second being fifty dollars for the 
best poem; but the judges refused to give both prizes to 
one competitor. 

It was at this period of his life that Poe's love for his 
cousin, Virginia Clemm, sprang up. She was a beautiful 
girl twelve or thirteen years of age at the time, and Poe 
desired even then to make her his wife. In 1835, when 
he had secured regular employment as editor of the Southern 
Literary Messenger of Richmond, Mrs. Clemm moved to that 
city, and Poe and Virginia were married, the latter being 
then not quite fourteen years old. Poe had a fixed salary 
now, and his success seemed assured. His articles, stories, 
and poems were attracting wide notice, and the circulation 
of the Messenger was rapidly increasing. But in 1837, per- 
haps on account of his irregular habits, he retired from the 
editorship which he had so acceptably filled for a year or 
more. 

Other editorial schemes were now tried. Poe went 
first to New York, then to Philadelphia, and did some 
literary hack work. In 1839 he obtained an editorial posi- 
tion on Burton's Gentleman' s Magazine, but within a year 
he severed his connection with this periodical. He pub- 
lished in 1839 a volume of short stories called Tales of the 
Grotesque and Arabesque. This volume brought him no 
money, but it broadened his fame. In 1841 he became 
editor of Graham's Magazine, and within a few months the 
circulation of this periodical increased from five thousand 
to thirty-seven thousand. Poe was now publishing some of 
his most original short stories, such as "The Murders in the 
Rue Morgue," "The Masque of the Red Death," and others. 

In 1842 the erratic editor of Graham's Magazine was 
supplanted by R. W. Griswold. The story goes that Poe 
disappeared for a few days, as was his peculiar custom, 



380 American Literary Readings 

and when he returned to the office he found Griswold 
seated in the editorial chair. Without waiting for explana- 
tions, Poe turned on his heel and left the office. He con- 
tinued, however, to be a contributor to this periodical, and 
was on friendly terms with the owner. 

Other ventures in editorial work and original schernes 
for founding an independent magazine occupied Poe at this 
time, but he seems never to have been able to put his plans 
into operation or to get on in the world. He gained wide 
fame through "The Raven," which was published in 1845, 
and a new edition of his verses with this poem leading in 
the title was issued in the fall of the same year. The next 
year, he took up his residence in the famous cottage at 
Fordham, near New York. Here he tried to make a living 
by his contributions to various magazines, but he was 
continually yielding to his taste for drink and the use of 
opium. His health failed, and the whole family was for a 
time dependent upon public charity. 

In 1847 his young wife died. From this time on to the end 
of his life, Poe seems to have been a broken-hearted and 
hopeless man. Once or twice he made a real effort to throw 
off the terrible gloom and the distressing habits which had 
gained such a grip on him. His genius had not yet been 
exhausted, for he produced in these last years some of his 
most exquisite lyric poems, such as "Ulalume," "The Bells," 
and "Annabel Lee." He was unable to make a living, 
however. He tried to earn something by lecturing, but he 
failed to attract an audience in New York. He then went 
South, and here he met with more success. At Richmond 
his friends rallied to his support, and in a benefit lecture 
he realized about fifteen hundred dollars. He intended to 
return to New V'ork, where Mrs. Clemm was anxiously 
waiting to hear from him and learn his plans, but he never 
reached that city. Mystery hangs about his last days. No 
one knows what happened to him after he left Richmond 
on September 30, 1849. When his friends found him 
three days later, he was lying unconscious in a saloon which 
had been used as one of the ward polling places in a city 
election at Baltimore. The physician who attended him, 
and had him taken to Washington Hospital, testified that 
Poe was not drunk but drugged. The theory now generally 
accepted is that he fell into the hands of a corrupt electioneer- 
ing gang, was drugged and robbed, and then carried around 



Edgar Allan Poe 381 

from polling place to polling place and made to vote under 
false names. On Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, the 
ill-starred poet passed quietly away. 

Such was the life of the strangest and most unfortunate 
of all American men of letters. There are those who con- 
demn Poe as an ingrate, a degenerate, a reprobate; but those 
more charitably inclined consider him an unfortunate son 
of genius who was unable, from his very nature, to control 
his actions. That he was unreliable, erratic, intemperate, 
his most ardent admirers will not deny. That he was dis- 
honest, immoral, or licentious, his enemies will hesitate to 
affirm. That he was his own worst enemy, all will readily 
admit. His life is one to point a moral. 

Poe's life story attracts us both because of its mystery 
and because of its pathos. As to his literary power, there 
is but one opinion. Abroad he is generally considered the 
greatest of American poets, and there are many in our own 
country who accept this judgment without question. His 
poetry has in it a quality of mystery and illusiveness, a pecu- 
liar beauty of harmony and rhythm, a haunting weirdness 
of melody, that make it a distinct and original type; his 
critical works, though many of them were written as mere 
"pot-boilers," have won consideration among scholars; he 
is given credit for creating the modern detective or ratio- 
cinative story ; and as a writer of tales of mystery and horror 
he is acknowledged to be without a peer. 

For further selections from Poe, see Southern Literary Readings, 
in which we have printed and analyzed two tales, "The Gold Bug" 
and "The Masque of the Red Death"; four poems, "The Haunted 
Palace," "The Raven," "The Bells," and "Annabel Lee"; and one 
essay, "The Philosophy of Composition." 

(There are many books and essays on Poe, but the authoritative 
biography is that by George E. Woodberry, published in two volumes, 
in 1909. An excellent brief treatment with a full Poe bibliography 
by Dr. Killis Campbell may by found in the Cambridge History of 
American Literature.) 



REVIEW OF HAWTHORNE'S TWICE-TOLD TALES 

We said a few hurried words about Mr. Hawthorne in our 
last number, with the design of speaking more fully in the 
present. We are still, however, pressed for room, and must 
necessarily discuss his volumes more briefly and more at 

6 random than their high merits deserve. 

The book professes to be a collection of tales, yet is, in 
two respects, misnamed. These pieces are now in their 
third republication, and, of course, are thrice-told. More- 
over, they are by no means all tales, either in the ordinary 

10 or in the legitimate understanding of the term. Many of 
them are pure essays; for example, "Sights from a Steeple," 
"Sunday at Home," "Little Annie's Ramble," "A Rill from 
the Town Pump," "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," "The 
Haunted Mind," "The Sister Years," "Snow-Flakes," 

15 "Night Sketches," and "Foot-Prints on the Sea-Shore." 
We mention these matters chiefly on account of their dis- 
crepancy with that marked precision and finish by which the 
body of the work is distinguished. 

Of the Essays just named, we must be content to speak in 

20 brief. They are each and all beautiful, without being 
characterized by the polish and adaptation so visible in the 
tales proper. A painter would at once note their leading 
or predominant feature, and style it repose. There is no 
attempt at effect. All is quiet, thoughtful, subdued. Yet 

25 this repose may exist simultaneously with high originality of 
thought; and Mr. Hawthorne has demonstrated the fact. 
At every turn we meet with novel combinations; yet these 
combinations never surpass the limits of the quiet. We 
are soothed as we read; and withal is a calm astonishment 

30 that ideas so apparently obvious have never occurred or been 
presented to us before. Herein our author differs materially 

[382] 



Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales 383 

from Lamb or Hunt or Hazlitt— who, with vivid originaHty 
of manner and expression, have less of the true novelty of 
thought than is generally supposed, and whose originality, 
at best, has an uneasy and meretricious quaintness, replete 35 
with startling effects unfounded in nature, and inducing 
trains of reflection which lead to no satisfactory result. The 
Essays of Hawthorne have much of the character of Irving, 
with more of originality, and less of finish ; while, compared 
with the Spectator, they have a vast superiority at all points. 40 
The Spectator, Mr. Irving, and Mr. Hawthorne have in com- 
mon that tranquil and subdued manner which we have chosen 
to denominate repose; but, in the case of the two former, this 
repose is attained rather by the absence of novel combination, 
or of originality, than otherwise, and consists chiefly in the 45 
calm, quiet, unostentatious expression of commonplace 
thoughts, in an unambitious unadulterated Saxon. In 
them, by strong effort, we are made to conceive the absence 
of all. In the essays before us the absence of effort is too 
obvious to be mistaken, and a strong under-current of sug- so 
gestion runs continuously beneath the upper stream of the 
tranquil thesis. In short, these effusions of Mr. Haw- 
thorne are the product of a truly imaginative intellect, 
restrained, and in some measure repressed, by fastidiousness 
of taste, by constitutional melancholy and by indolence. 55 

But it is of his tales that we desire principally to speak. 
The tale proper, in our opinion, affords unquestionably the 
fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can 
be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose. Were we 
bidden to say how the highest genius could be most advan- eo 
tageously employed for the best display of its own powers, 
we should answer, without hesitation — in the composition 
of a rhymed poem, not to exceed in length what might be 
perused in an hour. Within this limit alone can the highest 
order of true poetry exist. We need only here say, upon es 
this topic, that, in almost all classes of composition, the 
unity of effect or impression is a point of the greatest 



384 American Literary Readings 

importance. It is clear, moreover, that this unity cannot be 
thoroughly preserved in productions whose perusal cannot 

70 be completed at one sitting. We may continue the reading 
of a prose composition, from the very nature of prose itself, 
much longer than we can persevere, to any good purpose, 
in the perusal of a poem. This latter, if truly fulfilling the 
demands of the poetic sentiment, induces an exaltation of 

75 the soul which cannot be long sustained. All high excite- 
ments are necessarily transient. Thus a long poem is a 
paradox. And, without unity of impression, the deepest 
effects cannot be brought about. Epics were the offspring 
of an imperfect sense of Art, and their reign is no more. A 

80 poem too brief may produce a vivid, but never an intense 
or enduring impression. Without a certain continuity of 
effort — without a certain duration or repetition of purpose — 
the soul is never deeply moved. There must be the dropping 
of the water upon the rock. De Beranger has wrought bril- 

ssliant things — pungent and spirit-stirring — but, like all im- 
massive bodies, they lack momentum, and thus fail to satisfy 
the Poetic Sentiment. They sparkle and excite, but, from 
want of continuity, fail deeply to impress. Extreme brevity 
will degenerate into epigrammatism ; but the sin of extreme 

90 length is even more unpardonable. In medio tutissimus 
ibis. 

Were we called upon, however, to designate that class of 
composition which, next to such a poem as we have sug- 
gested, should best fulfil the demands of high genius — 

95 should offer it the most advantageous field of exertion — we 
should unhesitatingly speak of the prose tale, as Mr. Haw- 
thorne has here exemplified it. We allude to the short 
prose narrative, requiring from a half -hour to one or two 
hours in its perusal. The ordinary novel is objectionable, 

100 from its length, for reasons already stated in substance. 
As it cannot be read at one sitting, it deprives itself, of 
course, of the immense force derivable from totality. Worldly 
interests intervening during the pauses of perusal, modify, 



Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales 385 

annul, or counteract, in a greater or less degree, the impres- 
sions of the book. But simple cessation in reading would, 105 
of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity. In the 
brief .tale, however, the author is enabled to carry out the 
fulness of his intention, be it what it may. During the hour 
of perusal the soul of the reader is at the writer's control. 
There are no external or extrinsic influences — resulting from no 
weariness or interruption. 

A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, 
he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his inci- 
dents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain 
unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents iis 
such incidents ^ — he then combines such events as may best 
aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very 
initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, 
then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition 
there should be no word written, of which the tendency, 120 
direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. 
And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is 
at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who 
contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest sat- 
isfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblem- 125 
ished, because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable 
by the novel. Undue brevity is just a^ exceptionable here 
as in the poem ; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. 

We have said that the tale has a point of superiority even 
over the poem. In fact, while the rhythm of this latter is an 130 
essential aid in the development of the poem's highest idea — 
the idea of the Beautiful — the artificialities of this rhythm 
are an inseparable bar to the development of all points of 
thought or expression which have their basis in Truth. 
But Truth is often, and in very great degree, the aim of the 135 
tale. Some of the finest tales are tales of ratiocination. 
Thus the field of this species of composition, if not in so 
elevated a region on the mountain of Mind, is a table-land 
of far vaster extent than the domain of the mere poem. Its 



386 American Literary Readings 

140 products are never so rich, but infinitely more numerous, 
and more appreciable by the mass of mankind. The writer 
of the prose tale, in short, may bring to his theme a vast 
variety of modes or inflections of thought and expression — 
(the ratiocinative, for example, the sarcastic or the humor- 

146 ous) which are not only antagonistical to the nature of the 
poem, but absolutely forbidden by one of its most peculiar 
and indispensable adjuncts; we allude, of course, to rhythm. 
It may be added, here, par parenthese, that the author who 
aims at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is laboring at 

150 great disadvantage. For Beauty can be better treated 
in the poem. Not so with terror, or passion, or horror, or a 
multitude of such other points. And here it will be seen 
how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against 
those tales of effect, many fine examples of which were found 

155 in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. The impressions 
produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and 
constituted a legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated 
interest. They were relished by every man of genius: 
although there were found many men of genius who con- 

160 demned them without just ground. The true critic will 
but demand that the design intended be accomplished, to 
the fullest extent, by 'the means most advantageously 
applicable. 

We have very few American tales of real merit — we may 

165 say, indeed, none, with the exception of "The Tales of a 
Traveller" of Washington Irving, and these "Twice-Told 
Tales" of Mr. Hawthorne. Some of the pieces of Mr. John 
Neal abound in vigor and originality; but in general, his 
compositions of this class are excessively diffuse, extrava- 

170 gant, and indicative of an imperfect sentiment of Art. 
Articles at random are, now and then, met with in our 
periodicals which might be advantageously compared with 
the best effusions of the British Magazines; but, upon the 
whole, we are far behind our progenitors in this department 

175 of literature. 



Review of HawiJwrne's Twice-told Tales 387 

Of Mr. Hawthorne's Tales we would say, emphatically, 
that they belong to the highest region of Art — an Art 
subservient to genius of a very lofty order. We had sup- 
posed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had been 
thrust into his present position by one of the impudent iso 
cliques which beset our literature, and whose pretensions it 
is our full purpose to expose at the earliest opportunity; 
but we have been most agreeably mistaken. We know of 
few compositions which the critic can more honestly com- 
mend than these "Twice-Told Tales." As Americans, we iss 
feel proud of the book. 

Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, 
imagination, originality — a trait which, in the literature of 
fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of 
originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is 190 
but imperfectly understood. The inventive or original 
mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in 
novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original at all points. 

It would be a matter of some difficulty to designate the 
best of these tales; we repeat that, without exception, they 195 
are beautiful. "Wakefield" is remarkable for the skill 
with which an old idea — a well-known incident — is worked 
up or discussed. A man of whims conceives the purpose of 
quitting his wife and residing incognito, for twenty years, 
in her immediate neighborhood. Something of this kind 200 
actually happened in London. The force of Mr. Haw- 
Miorne's tale lies in the analysis of the motives which must 
or might have impelled the husband to such folly, in the first 
instance, with the possible causes of his perseverance. 
Upon this thesis a sketch of singular power has been con- 205 
structed. 

"The Wedding Knell" is full of the boldest imagination — 
an imagination fully controlled by taste. The most captious 
critic could find no flaw in this production. 

"The Minister's Black Veil" is a masterly composition of 210 
which the sole defect is that to the rabble its exquisite skill 



388 American Literary Readings 

will be caviare. The obvious meaning of this article will be 
found to smother its insinuated one. The moral put into 
the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey 

215 the true import of the narrative; and that a crime of dark 
dye (having reference to the "young lady") has been com- 
mitted, is a point which only minds congenial with that of 
the author will perceive. 

"Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" is vividly original 

220 and managed most dexterously. 

"Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" is exceedingly well 
imagined, and executed with surpassing ability. The artist 
breathes in every line of it. 

"The White Old Maid" is objectionable, even more than 

225 the "Minister's Black Veil," on the score of its mysticism. 
Even with the thoughtful and analytic, there will be much 
trouble in penetrating its entire import. 

"The Hollow of the Three Hills" we would quote in full, 
had we space; — not as evincing higher talent than any of the 

23 other pieces, but as affording an excellent example of the 
author's peculiar ability. The subject is commonplace. A 
witch subjects the Distant and the Past to the view of a 
mourner. It has been the fashion to describe, in such cases, 
a mirror in which the images of the absent appear; or a 

235 cloud of smoke is made to arise, and thence the figures 
are gradually unfolded. Mr. Hawthorne has wonderfully 
heightened his effect by making the ear, in place of the eye, 
the medium by which the fantasy is conveyed. The head 
of the mourner is enveloped in the cloak of the witch, and 

240 within its magic folds there arise sounds which have an all- 
sufficient intelligence. Throughout this article also, the 
artist is conspicuous — not more in positive than in negative 
merits. Not only is all done that should be done, but (what 
perhaps is an end with more difficulty attained) there is 

245 nothing done which should not be. Every word tells, and 
there is not a word which does not tell. 

In "Howe's Masquerade" we observe something which 



Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales 389 

resembles a plagiarism — but which may be a very flat- 
tering coincidence of thought. We quote the passage in 
question. 250 

"With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the 
general draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the 
cloak before the latter had stepped on pace upon the floor. 

" 'Villain, unmuffle yourself,' cried he, 'you pass no 
farther ! ' 255 

"The figure, without blanching a hair's breadth from the 
sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause, 
and lowered the cape of the cloak from his face, yet not 
sufficiently for the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But 
Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. The stem- 260 
ness of his coiintenance gave place to a look of wild amaze- 
ment, if not horror, while he recoiled several steps from the 
figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor." 

The idea here is, that the figtu-e in the cloak is the phantom 
or reduplication of Sir William Howe; but in an article called 255 
"Wilham Wilson," one of the "Tales of the Grotesque and 
Arabesque," we have not only the same idea, but the same 
idea similarly presented m several respects. We quote two 
paragraphs, which our I'eaders may compare with what has 
been already given. We have italicized, above, the imme- 270 
ate particulars of resemblance. 

"The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been 
sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the 
arrangement at the upper or farther end of the room. A 
large mirror, it appeared to me, now stood where none had 275 
been perceptible before : and as I stepped up to it in extremity 
of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and 
dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and tottering gait 
to meet me. 

"Thus it appeared I say, but was not. It was Wilson, 280 
who then stood before me in the agonies of dissolution. 
Not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of 
that face which was not even identically mine own. His 
mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them, upon the 

floor." 285 



390 American Literary Readings 

Here it will be observed that, not only are the two gen- 
eral conceptions identical, but there are various points of 
similarity. In each case the figure seen is the wraith or 
duplication of the beholder. In each case the scene is a 

290 masquerade. In each case the figure is cloaked. In each, 
there is a quarrel — that is to say, angry words pass between 
the parties. In each the beholder is enraged. In each the 
cloak and sword fall upon the floor. The "villain, unmuffle 
yourself," of Mr. H. is precisely paralleled by a passage at 

295 page 56 of "William Wilson." 

In the way of objection we have scarcely a word to say of 
these tales. There is, perhaps, a somewhat too general or 
prevalent tone — a tone of melancholy and mysticism. The 
subjects are insufficiently varied. There is not so much of 

300 versatility evinced as we might well be warranted in expect- 
ing from the high powers of Mr. Hawthorne. But beyond 
these trivial exceptions we have really none to make. The 
style is purity itself. Force abounds. High imagination 
gleams from every page. Mr. Hawthorne is a man of the 

305 truest genius. We only regret that the limits of our Maga- 
zine will not permit us to pay him that full tribute of com- 
mendation, which, under other circumstances, we should be 
so eager to pay. 



THE CASK OP AMONTILLADO 

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best 
could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. 
You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not sup- 
pose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At 
5 length 1 would be avenged ; this was a point definitively settled 
— but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved pre- 
cluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish 
with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution 
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the 



The Cask of Amontillado 39 1 . 

avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has lo 
done the wrong. 

It must be understood that neither by word nor deed 
had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I con- 
tinued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did 
not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his 15 
immolation. 

He had a weak point — this Fortunato — although in other 
regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He 
prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians 
have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthu- 20 
siasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity to practice 
imposture upon the British and Austrian millionnaires. In 
painting and gemmary Fortunato, like his countrymen, was 
a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. 
In this respect I did not differ from him materially; I was 25 
skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely 
whenever I could. 

It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme mad- 
ness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. 
He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been 30 
drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight- 
fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by 
the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that 
I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. 

I said to him — "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. 35 
How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I have 
received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have 
my doubts." 

" How ? " said he . " Amontillado ? A pipe ? Impossible ! 
And in the middle of the carnival?" 40 

"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough 
to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in 
the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful 
of losing a bargain."- 

"Amontillado!" 45 



392 American Literary Readings 

"I have my doubts." 

"Amontillado!" 

"And I must satisfy them." 

"Amontillado!" 
50 "As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any 
one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me — " 

"Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." 

"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match 
for your own." 
55 "Come, let us go." 

"Whither?" 

"To your vaults." 

"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. 
I perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi — " 
60 "I have no engagement; come." 

" My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe 
cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults 
are insufferably damp. They are incrusted with nitre." 

"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. 

65 Amontillado ! You have been imposed upon ; and as for 

Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado." 

Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. 
Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaure 
closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my 
70 palazzo. 

There were no attendants at home; they had absconded 
to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them that 
I should not return until the morning, and had given them 
explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders were 
75 sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappear- 
ance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned. 

I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving 

one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of 

rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed 

80 down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be 

cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the 



The Cask of Amontillado 393 

descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the cata- 
combs of the Montresors. 

The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his 
cap jingled as he strode. ss 

"The pipe," said he. 

" It is farther on," said I ; "but observe the white web- work 
which gleams from these cavern walls." 

He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two 
filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. 90 

"Nitre?" he asked, at length. ■ 

"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that 
cough?" 

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!- — ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh! — 
ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh!" 95 

My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many 
minutes. 

"It is nothing," he said, at last. 

"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your 
health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, 100 
beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to 
be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you 
will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is 
Luchesi — " 

"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing: it will 105 
not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." 

"True — true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention 
of alarming you unnecessarily — but you should use all proper 
caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the 
damps." no 

Here I knocked ofif the neck of a bottle which I drew from 
a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould. 

"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. 

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and 
nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled. 115 

" I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." 

"And I to your long life." 



394 American Literary Readings 

He again took my arm, and we proceeded, 
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive." 
120 "The Montresors," I repHed, "were a great and numerous 
family." 

"I forget your arms." 

"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes 
a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." 
125 "And the motto ? " 

"Nemo me impune lacessit.'' 
"Good!" he said. 

The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My 
own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed 
130 through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons 
intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. 
I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunate 
by an arm above the elbow. 

"The nitre ! " I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss 
135 upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops 
of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back 
ere it is too late. Your cough — ■" 

"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another 
draught of the Medoc." 
140 I broke and reached him a flacon of De Grave. He 
emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. 
He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation 
I did not understand. 

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the move- 
145 ment — a grotesque one. 

"You do not comprehend?" he said. 
"Not I," I replied. 

"Then you are not of the brotherhood." 
"How?" 
150 "You are not of the masons." 
"Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes." 
"You? Impossible! A mason?" 
"A mason," I replied. 



The Cask of Amontillado 395 

"A sign," he said. 

"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath 155 
the folds of my roquelaure. 

"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But 
let us proceed to the Amontillado." 

"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, 
and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily, leo 
We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We 
passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, 
and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the 
foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than 
flame. les 

At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared 
another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human 
remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the 
•great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior 
crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the 170 
fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscu- 
ously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some 
size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the 
bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about 
four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed ns 
to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, 
but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal 
supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by 
one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. 

It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, 180 
endeavoured to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termi- 
nation the feeble light did not enable us to see. 

"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for 
Luchesi — " 

"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he iss 
stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately 
at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity 
of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, 
stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had 



396 American Literary Readings 

190 fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron 
staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. 
From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a 
padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but 
the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much 

195 astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back 
from the recess. 

"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot 
help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more 
let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively 

200 leave you. But I must first render you all the little atten- 
tions in my power." 

"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet 
recovered from his astonishment. 

"True," I replied; "the Amontillado." 

205 As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of 
bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, 
I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. 
With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began 
vigorously to wall up the entrance of the -niche. 

210 I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I 
discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great 
measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a 
low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not 
the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obsti- 

215 nate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the 
fourth ; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. 
The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I 
might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my 
labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the 

220 clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished with- 
out interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. 
The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I 
again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason- 
work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. 

225 A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly 



The Cask of Amontillado 397 

from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me 
violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated — I trembled. 
Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the 
recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed 
my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt 230 
satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I Feplied to the yells 
of him who clamoured. I re-echoed — I aided — I surpassed 
them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer 
grew still. 

It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. 235 
I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. 
I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there 
remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I 
struggled with its weight : I placed it partially in its destined 
position. But now there came from out the niche a low 240 
laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was suc- 
ceeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising 
as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said — 

"Ha! ha! ha! — he! he! — a very good joke indeed — an 
excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at 245 
the palazzo — he! he! he! — over our wine — he! he! he!" 

"The Amontillado!" I said. 

"He! he! he! — he! he! he! — yes, the Amontillado. But 
is it not getting late ? Will not they be awaiting us at the 
palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be 250 
gone." 

"Yes," I said, "let us be gone." 

"For the love of God, Montresor!" 

"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!" 

But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. 1 255 
grew impatient. I called aloud — 

"Fortunato!" 

No answer. I called again — 

"Fortunato!" 

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining 260 
aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return 



398 American Literary Readings 

only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick — on account 
of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an 
end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position ; I 
265 plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old 
rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has 
disturbed them. In pace requiescat! 

THE PURLOINED LETTER 

Nil sapientise odiosius acumine nimio. 

Seneca 

At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn 
of 1 8 — , I was enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and 
a meerschaum, in company with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, 
in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33 

5 Rue Donot, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at least 
we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any 
casual observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively 
occupied with the curling eddies of smoke that oppressed 
the atmosphere of the chamber. For myself, however, I 

10 was mentally discussing certain topics which had formed 
matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of 
the evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and 
the mystery attending the murder of Marie Roget. I 
looked upon it, therefore, as something of a coincidence, when 

15 the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted 

our old acquaintance, Monsieur G , the Prefect of the 

Parisian police. 

We gave him a hearty welcome ; for there was nearly half 
as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the 

20 man, and we had not seen him for several years. We had 
been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for the 
purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without 

doing so, upon G 's saying that he had called to consult 

us, or rather to ask the opinion of my friend, about some 

26 official business which had occasioned a great deal of trouble. 



The Purloined Letter 399 

"If it is any point requiring reflection," observed Dupin, 
as he forebore to enkindle the wick, "we shall examine it to 
better purpose in the dark." 

"That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, 
who had a fashion of calling everything "odd" that was 30 
beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute 
legion of "oddities." 

"Very true," said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with 
a pipe, and rolled towards him a comfortable chair. 

"And what is the difflculty now?" I asked. "Nothing 35 
more in the assassination way, I hope?" 

" Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business 
is very simple indeed, and I make no doubt that we can 
manage it sufflciently well ourselves; but then I thought 
Dupin would like to hear the details of it, because it is so 40 
excessively odd^ 

"Simple and odd," said Dupin. 

"Why, yes; and not exactly that either. The fact is, 
we have all been a good deal puzzled because the affair is so 
simple, and yet baffles us altogether." 45 

"Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts 
you at fault," said my friend. 

"What nonsense you do talk!" replied the Prefect, laugh- 
ing heartily. 

"Perhaps the mystery is a 'little too plain," said Dupin. so 

"Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?" 

"A little too self-evident." 

"Ha! ha! ha!— ha! ha! ha! — ho! ho! ho!" roared our 
visitor, profoundly amused. "Oh, Dupin, you will be the 
death of me yet!" 55 

"And what, after all, is the matter on hand?" I asked. 

"Why, I will tell you," replied the Prefect, as he gave 
a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself 
in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but, before 
I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding eo 
the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose 



400 American Literary Readings 

the position I now hold were it known that I confided it to 
any one." 

"Proceed," said I. 
65 "Or not," said Dupin. 

"Well, then; I have received personal information, from 
a very high quarter, that a certain document of the last 
importance has been purloined from the royal apartments. 
The individual who purloined it is known; this beyond a 
70 doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it 
still remains in his possession." 

"How is this known?" asked Dupin. 

"It is clearly inferred," replied the Prefect, "from the 
nature of the document, and from the non-appearance of 
75 certain results which would at once arise from its passing 
out of the robber's possession; — that is to say, from his em- 
ploying it as he must design in the end to employ it." 

"Be a little more explicit," I said. 

"Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives 
80 its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such 
power is immensely valuable." The Prefect was fond of 
the cant of diplomacy. 

"Still I do not quite understand," said Dupin. 

"No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third 
85 person who shall be nameless would bring in question the 
honour of a personage of most exalted station ; and this fact 
gives the holder of the document an ascendency over the 
illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopard- 
ized." 
90 "But this ascendency," I interposed, "would depend upon 
the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the 
robber. Who would dare" — 

"The thief," said G , "is the Minister D , who 

dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming 

95 a man. The method of the theft was not less ingenious than 

bold. The document in question — a letter, to be frank — 

had been received by the personage robbed while alone in 



The Purloined Letter 401 

the royal boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly- 
interrupted by the entrance of the other exalted personage 
from whom especially it was her wish to conceal it. After 100 
a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she was 
forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, 
however, was uppermost, and the contents thus unexposed, 
the letter escaped notice. At this junctiu-e enters the 

Minister D . His lynx eye immediately perceives the 105 

paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes 
the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms 
her secret. After some business transactions, hurried 
through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter some- 
what similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read no 
it, and then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. 
Again he converses for some fifteen minutes upon the 
public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he takes also from 
the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful 
owner saw, but of course dared not call attention to the act, 115 
in the presence of the third personage who stood at her 
elbow. The minister decamped; leaving his own letter — 
one of no importance — upon the table." 

"Here, then," said Dupin to me, "you have precisely 
what you demand to make the ascendency complete — the 120 
robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber." 

" Yes," repHed the Prefect; "and the power thus attained 
has, for some months past, been wielded for political 
purposes to a very dangerous extent. The personage robbed 
is more thoroughly convinced every day of the necessity of 125 
reclaiming her letter. But this of course cannot be done 
openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the 
matter to me." 

"Than whom," said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind 
of smoke, "no more sagacious agent could, I suppose, be 130 
desired, or even imagined." 

" You flatter me," replied the Prefect; "but it is possible 
that some such opinion may have been entertained." 

14 



402 American Literary Readings 

"It is clear," said I, "as you observe, that the letter is 

135 still in possession of the minister; since it is this possession, 
and not any employment of the letter, which bestows the 
power. With the employment the power departs." 

"True," said G ; "and upon this conviction I pro- 
ceeded. My first care was to make thorough search of the 

140 minister's hotel; and here my chief embarrassment lay in 

the necessity of searching without his knowledge. Beyond 

all things, I have been warned of the danger which would 

result from giving him reason to suspect our design." 

"But," said I, "you are quite au fait in these investi- 

145 gations. The Parisian police have done this thing often 
before." 

"Oh, yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The 
habits of the minister gave me, too, a great advantage. He 
is frequently absent from home all night. His servants are 

150 by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance from 
their master's apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are 
readily made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which 
I can open any chamber or cabinet in Paris. For three 
months a night has not passed, during the greater part of 

155 which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking 

the D Hotel. My honour is interested, and, to mention 

a great secret, the reward is enormous. So I did not abandon 
the search until I had become fully satisfied that the thief 
is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I have 

160 investigated every nook and comer of the premises in which 
it is possible that the paper can be concealed." 

"But is it not possible," I suggested, "that although the 
letter may be in possession of the minister, as it unquestion- 
ably is, he may have concealed it elsewhere than upon his 

1^5 own premises?" 

"This is barely possible," said Dupin. "The present 
peculiar condition of affairs at court, and especially of those 

intrigues in which D is known to be involved, would 

render the instant availability of the document — its 



The Purloined Letter 403 

susceptibility of being produced at a moment's notice — a no 
point of nearly equal importance with its possession." 

"Its susceptibility of being produced?" said I. 

"That is to say of being destroyed," said Dupin. 

"True," I observed; "the paper is clearly then upon the 
premises. As for its being upon the person of the minister, 175 
we may consider that as out of the question." 

"Entirely," said the Prefect. "He has been twice way- 
laid, as if by footpads, and his person rigorously searched 
under my own inspection." 

"You might have spared yourself this trouble," said 1 so 

Dupin. " D , I presinne, is not altogether a fool, and, if 

not, must have anticipated these waylayings as a matter 
of course." 

" Not altogether a fool," said G ; "but then he 's a poet, 

which I take to be only one remove from a fool." iss 

"True," said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff 
from his meerschaum, "although I have been guilty of 
certain doggerel myself." 

"Suppose you detail," said I, "the particulars of yotu" 
search." 190 

"Why, the fact is, we took our time, and we searched 
everywhere. I have had long experience in these affairs. 
I took the entire building, room by room; devoting the 
nights of a whole week to each. We examined, first, the 
furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible 195 
drawer; and I presume you know that, to a properly trained . 
police-agent, such a thing as a secret drawer is impossible. 
Any man is a dolt who permits a 'secret' drawer to escape 
him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There 
is a certain amount of bulk — of space — to be accounted for 200 
in every cabinet. Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth 
part of a line could not escape us. After the cabinets we 
took the chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine long 
needles you have seen me employ. From the tables we 
removed the tops." 20* 



404 American Literary Readings 

"Why so?" 

"Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged 
piece of furniture, is removed by the person wishing to con- 
ceal an article; then the leg is excavated, the article deposited 

210 within the cavity, and the top replaced. The bottoms 
and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way." 

"But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?" I 
asked. 

" By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient 

215 wadding of cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our 
case, we were obliged to proceed without noise." 

"But you could not have removed- — you could not have 
taken to pieces all articles of furniture in which it would have 
been possible to make a deposit in the manner you mention. 

220 A letter may be compressed into a thin spiral roll, not 
differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting- 
needle, and in this form it might be inserted into the rung 
of a chair, for example. You did not take to pieces all 
the chairs?" 

225 "Certainly not; but we did better — we examined the 
rungs of every chair in the hotel, and indeed, the jointings of 
every description of furniture, by the aid of a most powerful 
microscope. Had there been any traces of recent disturb- 
ance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A 

230 single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been 
as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the glueing — any 
unusual gaping in the joints — would have sufficed to insure 
detection." 

" I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards 

235 and the plates, and you probed the beds and the bedclothes, 
as well as the curtains and carpets?" 

"That, of course; and when we had absolutely completed 
every particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined 
the house itself. We divided its entire surface into com- 

240 partments, which we numbered, so that none might be 
missed; then we scrutinised each individual square inch 



The Purloined Letter 405 

throughout the premises, including the two houses imme- 
diately adjoining, with the microscope, as before." 

"The two houses adjoining?" I exclaimed; "you must 
have had a great deal of trouble." 245 

"We had; but the reward offered is prodigious." 

"You include the grotinds about the houses?" 

"All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us 
comparatively little trouble. We examined the moss 
between the bricks, and found it undisturbed." 250 

"You looked among D 's papers, of course, and into 

the books of the library?" 

"Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we 
not only opened every book, but we turned over every 
leaf in each volume, not contenting oiu-selves with a mere 255 
shake, according to the fashion of some of our police-officers. 
We also measured the thickness of every hook-cover, with 
the most accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the 
most jealous scrutiny of the microscope. Had any of the 
bindings been recently meddled with, it would have been 260 
utterly impossible that the fact should have escaped obser- 
vation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of 
the binder, we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the 
needles." 

"You explored the floors beneath the carpets?" 205 

* ' Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined 
the boards with the microscope." 

"And the paper on the walls?" 

"Yes." 

"You looked into the cellars?" 270 

"We did." 

"Then," I said, "you have been making a miscalculation, 
and the letter is not upon the premises, as you suppose." 

" I fear you are right there," said the Prefect. "And now, 
Dupin, what would you advise me to do?" 275 

"To make a thorough re-search of the premises." 

"That is absolutely needless," replied G . "I am 



4o6 American Literary Readings 

not more sure that I breathe than I am that the letter 
is not at the hotel." 
280 "I have no better advice to give you," said Dupin. " You 
have, of course, an accurate description of the letter?" 

"Oh yes!" — ^And here the Prefect, producing a memo- 
randum-book, proceeded to read aloud a minute account of 
the internal, and especially of the external, appearance of the 
285 missing document. Soon after finishing the perusal of this 
description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed 
in spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman 
before. 

In about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and 
290 found us occupied very nearly as* before. He took a pipe 
and a chair and entered into some ordinary conversation. 
At length I said, 

"Well, but G , what of the purloined letter? I pre- 
sume you have at last made up your mind that there is no 
295 such thing as overreaching the minister?" 

"Confound him, say I — yes; I made the re-examination, 
however, as Dupin suggested — but it was all labour lost, as 
I knew it would be." 

"How much was the reward offered, did you say?" asked 
300 Dupin. 

"Why, a very great deal — a very liberal reward — I don't 
like to say how much, precisely; but one thing I will say, 
that I would n't mind giving my individual cheque for fifty 
thousand francs to any one who could obtain me that letter. 
305 The fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance 
every day; and the reward has been lately doubled. If it 
were trebled, however, I could do no more than I have 
done." 

"Why, yes," said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs 

310 of his meerschaum, "I really — think, G , you have not 

exerted yourself — to the utmost in this matter. You might 
— do a little more, I think, eh?" 
"How? — in what way?" 



The Purloined Letter 407 

"Why — puff, puff — you might — puff, puff — employ 
counsel in the matter, eh? — puff, puff, puff. Do you 315 
remember the story they tell of Abemethy?" 

"No; hang Abemethy!" 

"To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a 
time, a certain rich miser conceived the design of sponging 
upon this Abemethy for a medical opinion. Getting up, 320 
for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private com- 
pany, he insinuated his case to the physician as that of an 
imaginary individual. 

" 'We will suppose,' said the miser, 'that his symptoms 
are such and such; now, doctor, what would you have 325 
directed him to take?' 

" 'Take!' said Abemethy, 'why, take advice, to be sure.' " 

"But," said the Prefect, a little discomposed, "I am 
perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would 
really give fifty thousand francs to anybody who would aid 330 
me in the matter." 

"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and 
producing a cheque-book, "you may as well fill me up a 
cheque for the amount mentioned. When you have signed 
it, I will hand you the letter." 335 

I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely thun- 
der-stricken. For some minutes he remained speechless and 
motionless, looking incredulously at my friend with open 
mouth, and eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; 
then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he 340 
seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, 
finally filled up and signed a cheque for fifty thousand francs 
and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter exam- 
ined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, 
unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the 345 
Prefect. This functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of 
joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at 
its contents, and then scrambling and struggling to the door, 
rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and from 



4o8 American Literary Readings 

350 the house, without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had 
requested him to fill up the cheque. 

When he had gone my friend entered into some explana- 
tions. 

"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in 

355 their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and 
thoroughly versed in the knowledge which their duties seem 

chiefly to demand. Thus, when G detailed to us his 

mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D ^ I felt 

entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investi- 

360 gation — so far as his labours extended." 

"So far as his labours extended?" said I. 
"Yes," said Dupin. "The measures adopted were not 
only the best of their kind, but carried out to absolute 
perfection. Had the letter been deposited within the range 

365 of their search, these fellows would, beyond question, have 
found it." 

I merely laughed, but he seemed quite serious in all that 
he said. 

"The measures, then," he continued, "were good in their 

370 kind, and well executed; their defect lay in their being inap- 
plicable to the case, and to the man. A certain set of highly 
ingenious resources are with the Prefect a sort of Pro- 
crustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But 
he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow for the 

376 matter in hand, and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner 
than he. I knew one about eight years of age, whose suc- 
cess at guessing in the game of 'even and odd' attracted 
universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played 
with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of 

380 these toys, and demands of another whether that number is 
even or odd. If the guess is right the guesser wins one; if 
wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the 
marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of 
guessing, and this lay in mere observation and admeasure- 

385ment of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, 



The Purloined Letter 409 

an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and holding up his 
closed hand asks, 'are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy- 
replies 'Odd,' and loses, but upon the second trial he wins, 
for he then says to himself, ' the simpleton had them even 
upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufh- 390 
cient to make him have them odd upon the second, I will 
therefore guess odd'; he guesses odd, and wins. Now 
with a simpleton a degree above the first he would have 
reasoned thus : ' This fellow finds that in the first instance 
I guessed odd, and in the second he will propose to himself 395 
upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, 
as did the first simpleton, but then a second thought will 
suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will 
decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess 
even ' ; he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reason- 4oo 
ing in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed * lucky, ' 
what in its last analysis is it?" 

"It is merely," I said, "an identification of the reasoner's 
intellect with that of his opponent." 

"It is," said Dupin, "and upon inquiring of the boy by 405 
what means he effected the thorough identification in which 
his success consisted, I. received answer as follows: 'When 
I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or 
how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the 
moment, I fashion the expression of my face as accurately 410 
as possible in accordance with the expression of his, and 
then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my 
mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expres- 
sion.' This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of 
all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to 415 
Rochefoucauld, to La Bruyere, to Machiavelli, and to 
Campanella." 

" And the identification," I said, "of the reasoner's intellect 
with that of his opponents depends, if I understand you 
aright, upon the accuracy with which the opponent's intellect 420 
is admeasured." 



4IO American Literary Readings 

"For its practical value it depends upon this," replied 
Dupin, "and the Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, 
first, by default of this identification, and secondly, by 

425 ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-admeasurement 
of the intellect with which they are engaged. They con- 
sider only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching 
for anything hidden, advert only to the modes in which 
they would have hidden it. They are right in this much — 

430 that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that 
of the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is 
diverse in character from their own, the felon foils them 
of course. This always happens when it is above their own, 
and very usually when it is below. They have no variation 

435 of principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by 
some unusual emergency, by some extraordinary reward, 
they extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice, without 
touching their principles. What, for example, in this case 
of D has been done to vary the principle of action? 

4 40 What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and 
scrutinising with the microscope, and dividing the surface 
of the building into registered square inches — what is it all 
but an exaggeration of the application of the one principle 
or set of principles of search, which are based upon the one 

445 set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the 
Prefect in the long routine of his duty has been accustomed ? 
Do you not see he has taken it for granted that all men 
proceed to conceal a letter — not exactly in a gimlet -hole 
bored in a chair-leg — but, at least, in some out-of-the-way 

450 hole or comer suggested by the same tenor of thought which 
would urge. a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored 
in a chair-leg? And do you not see also that such recherches 
nooks for concealment are adapted only for ordinary occa- 
sions, and would be adopted only by ordinary intellects, 

455 for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article 
concealed, a disposal of it in this recherche manner, is in 
the very first instance presumable and presumed, and thus 



The Purloined Letter 411 

its discovery depends, not at all upon the acumen, but 
altogether upon the mere care, patience, and detennination 
of the seekers, and where the case is of importance, or what 46o 
amounts to the same thing in the policial eyes, when the 
reward is 'of magnitude, the qualities in question have 
never been known to fail? You will now understand what 
I meant in suggesting that had the purloined letter been 
hidden anywhere within the limits of the Prefect's examina- 455 
tion — in other words, had the principle of its concealment 
been comprehended within the principles of the Prefect, 
its discovery would have been a matter altogether beyond 
question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly 
mystified, and the remote source of his defeat lies in the 470 
supposition that the minister is a fool because he has acquired 
renown as a poet. All fools are poets, this the Prefect 
feels, and he is merely guilty of a non distrihutio medii in 
thence inferring that all poets are fools." 

• "But is this really the poet?" I asked. "There are two 475 
brothers, I know, and both have attained reputation in 
letters. The minister, I believe, has written learnedly on the 
Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician and no poet." 

"You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As 
poet and mathematician he would reason well; as mere 4 so 
mathematician he could not have reasoned at all, and thus 
would have been at the mercy of the Prefect." 

"You siu-prise me," I said, "by these opinions, which 
have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You 
do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of 485 
centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded 
as the reason par excellence .'' 

" 'II y a a parier,' " replied Dupin, quoting from Cham- 
fort, " 'que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une 
sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre.' The 490 
mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best to promul- 
gate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none 
the less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art 



412 American Literary Readings 

worthy a better cause, for example, they have insinuated 

495 the term 'analysis' into application to algebra. The French 
are the originators of this particular deception, but if a term 
is of any importance, if words derive any value from 
applicability, then 'analysis' conveys 'algebra' about as 
much as, in Latin, 'ambitus' implies 'ambition,' 'religio' 

500 'religion,' or 'homines honestV a set of honourable men." 
"You have a quarrel on hand, I see," said I, "with some 
of the algebraists of Paris — but proceed." 

"I dispute the availability, and thus the value of that 
reason which is cultivated in any especial form other than 

505 the abstractly logical. I dispute in particular the reason 
educed by mathematical study. The mathematics are the 
science of form and quantity, mathematical reasoning is 
merely logic applied to observation upon form and quantity. 
The great error lies in supposing that even the truths of 

510 what is called pure algebra are abstract or general truths. 
And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the 
universality with which it has been received. Mathe- 
matical axioms are not axioms of general truth. What is 
true of relation — of form and quantity — is often grossly false 

515 in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it is 
very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to 
the whole. In chemistry also the axiom fails. In the 
consideration of motive it fails, for two motives, each of a 
given value, have not necessarily a value when united equal 

520 to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other 
mathematical truths which are only truths within the 
limits of relation. But the mathematician argues from 
his finite truths, through habit, as if they were of an absolutely 
general applicability — as the world indeed imagines them 

525 to be. Bryant, in his very learned Mythology, mentions 
an analogous source of error, when he says that 'although 
the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves 
continually, and make inferences from them as existing 
realities.' With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans 



The Purloined Letter 413 

themselves, the ' Pagan fables' are believed, and the inferences 530 
are made, not so much through lapse of memory as through 
an unaccountable addling of the brains. In short, I never 
yet encountered the mere mathematician who could be 
trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely 
hold it as a point of his faith that x^-\-px was absolutely and 535 
unconditionally equal to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, 
by way of experiment, if you please, that you believe occa- 
sions may occur where x^+px is not altogether equal to q, 
and having made him understand what you mean, get out of 
his reach as speedily as convenient, for beyond doubt he 540 
will endeavor to knock you down. 

"I mean to say," continued Dupin, while I merely laughed 
at his last observations, "that if the minister had been no 
more than a mathematician, the Prefect would have been 
under no necessity of giving me this cheque. I knew him, 545 
however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures 
were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circum- 
stances by which he was surrounded. I knew him as 
coiurtier, too, and as a bold intrigant. Such a man, I con- 
sidered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial 550 
modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate — 
and events have proved that he did not fail to anticipate — 
the way layings to which he was subjected. He must have 
foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of his premises. 
His frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed 555 
by the Prefect as certain aids to his success, I regarded only 
as ruses, to afford opportunity for thorough search to the 
police, and thus the sooner to impress them with the con- 
viction to which G , in fact, did finally arrive — the 

conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I seo 
felt, also, that the whole train of thought which I was at 
some pains in detailing to you just now, concerning the 
invariable principle of policial action in searches for articles 
concealed — I felt that this whole train of thought would 
necessarily pass through the mind of the minister. It ses 



414 American Literary Readings 

would imperatively lead him to despise all the ordinary 
nooks of concealment. He could not, I reflected, be so weak 
as not to see that the. most intricate and remote recess of his 
hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, 

570 to the probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the 
Prefect. I saw, in fine, that he would be driven, as a matter 
of course, to simplicity, if not deliberately induced to it as 
a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps, how 
desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our 

575 first interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled 

him so much on account of its being so very self-evident." 

"Yes," said I, "I remember his merriment well. I 

really thought he would have fallen into convulsions." 

"The material world," continued Dupin, "abounds with 

580 very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some colour 
of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma that meta- 
phor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument, 
as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the 
vis inerticE, for example, seems to be identical in physics and 

585 metaphysics. It is not more true in the former that a 
large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a 
smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is com- 
mensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that 
intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more 

590 constant, and more eventful in their movements than those 
of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more 
embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of 
their progress. Again; have you ever noticed which of the 
street signs over the shop-doors are the most attractive of 

595 attention?" 

"I have never given the matter a thought," I said. 
"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is 
played upon a map. One party playing requires another 
to find a given word — the name of town, river, state, or 

600 empire — any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed 
surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks 



The Purloined Letter 415 

to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most 
minutely lettered names, but the adept selects such words 
as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to 
the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and 605 
placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being 
excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is 
precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which 
the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations 
which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident, eio 
But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath 
the understanding of the Prefect. He never once thought it 
probable, or possible, that the minister had deposited the 
letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by 
way of best preventing any portion of that world from per- eis 
ceiving it. 

"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and 

discriminating ingenuity of D ; upon the fact that the 

document must always have been at hand if he intended to 
use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence, 620 
obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the 
limits of that dignitary's ordinary search — the more satisfied 
I became that, to conceal this letter, the minister had 
resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of 
not attempting to conceal it at all. 625 

" Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green 
spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at 

the ministerial hotel. I found D at home, yawning, 

lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and pretending to be in 
the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really eao 
energetic human being now alive — but that is only when 
nobody sees him. 

"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, 
and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover 
of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole 635 
apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversa- 
tion of my host. 



4i6 American Literary Readings 

"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near 
which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly some miscel- 

640 laneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical 
instruments and a few books. Here, however, after a long 
and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite 
particular suspicion. 

"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell 

645 upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of paste-board that 
hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass 
knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this 
rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or 
six visiting cards and a solitary letter. This last was much 

6 50 soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the 
middle — as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely 
up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. 

It had a large black seal, bearing the D cipher very 

conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female 

655 hand, to D , the minister, himself. It was thrust care- 
lessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of 
the uppermost divisions of the rack. 

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded 
it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was 

660 to all appearance radically different from the one of which 
the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the 

seal was large and black, with the D cipher; there it 

was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S family. 

Here the address, to the minister, was diminutive and 

665 feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal person- 
age, was markedly bold and decided: the size alone formed 
a point .of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of 
these differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and 
torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true 

670 methodical habits of D , and so suggestive of a design to 

delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the 
document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive 
situation of this doctiment, full in the view of every visitor, 



The Purloined Letter 417 

and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which 
I had previously arrived: these things, I say, were strongly 675 
corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the 
intention to suspect. 

"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and while I 
maintained a most animated discussion with the minister, 
upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest eso 
and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the 
letter. In this examination I committed to memory its 
external appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also 
fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever 
trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the ess 
edges of the paper I observed them to be more chafed than 
seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance 
which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once 
folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed 
direction, in the same creases or edges which had formed the eoo 
original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to 
me that the letter had been turned as a glove, inside out, re- 
directed and re-sealed. I bade the minister good morning 
and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box 
upon the table. 695 

"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we 
resumed quite eagerly the conversation of the preceding 
day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report as if of 
a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the Avindows of the- 
hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and 700 
the shoutings of a terrified mob. D rushed to a case- 
ment, threw it open and looked out. In the meantime I 
stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, 
and replaced it by a facsimile (so far as regards externals) , 
which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings ^ — imitating 705 

the D cipher very readily by means of a seal formed 

of bread. 

' ' The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the 
frantic behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it 



4i8 American Literary Readings 

710 among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however,' 
to have been without ball, and the fellow was siiffered to 
go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, 

D came from the window, whither I had followed 

him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon 

715 afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was 
a man in my own pay." 

"But what purpose had you," I asked, "in replacing the 
letter by a facsimile? Would it not have been better at 
the first visit to have seized it openly, and departed?" 

720 "D ," replied Dupin, "is a desperate man and a man 

of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted 
to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest 
I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The 
good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But 

725 1 had an object apart from these considerations. You know 
my political prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a 
partisan of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the 
minister has had her in his power. She has now him in 
hers — since, being unaware that the letter is not in his posses- 

730 sion, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was. Thus 
will he inevitably commit himself at once to his political 
destruction. His downfall, too, will not be more precipitate 
than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis 
descensus Averni, but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani 

735 s^id of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come 
down. In the present instance I have no S3mipathy — at 
least no pity — for him who descends. He is that monstrum 
horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, 
however, that I should Uke very well to know the precise 

740 character of his thoughts, when, being defied by her whom 
the Prefect terms 'a certain personage,' he is reduced to 
opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack." 
"How? did you put anything particular in it?" 
"Why — it did not seem altogether right to leave the 

745 interior blank — that would have been insulting. D , at 



To Helen 419 

Vienna, once did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite 
good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew 
he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the 
person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give 
him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just 750 
copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words — 

' — Un dessein si funeste, 
S'il n'est digne d' Atree, est digne de Thyeste.' 

They are to be found in Crebillon's Atree." 



TO SCIENCE 

A PROLOGUE TO "aL AARAAF " 

Science ! true daughter of Old Time thou art, 

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? 
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise. 

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies. 

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? 
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car. 

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
To seek a shelter in some happier star? 

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree ? 

TO HELEN 

Helen, thy beauty is to me 

Like those Nicean barks of yore, 

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea. 
The weary, wayw^om wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 



420 American Literary Readings 

On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece 
And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand. 

The agate lamp within thy hand ! 
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
Are Holy Land! 

ISRAFEL 

And the angel Israfel, whose heartstrings are a lute, and who has 
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures. Koran 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

Whose heart-strings are a lute; 
None sing so wildly well 
As the angel Israfel, 
i And the giddy stars (so legends tell). 

Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 

Of his voice, all mute. 

Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 
3 The enamoured moon 

Blushes with love. 

While, to listen, the red levin 
(With the rapid Pleiads, even. 
Which were seven) , 
5 Pauses in Heaven. 

And they say (the starry choir 

And the other listening things) 
That Israfeli's fire 
Is owing to that lyre 



Israfel 42 i 

By which he sits and sings, 20 

The trembHng Hving wire 
Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angel trod, 

Where deep thoughts are a duty, 
Where Love 's a grown-up God, 25 

Where the Houri glances are 
Imbued with all the beauty 

Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest so 

An unimpassioned song; 
To thee the laurels belong, 

Best bard, because the wisest: 
Merrily Uve, and long! 

The ecstasies above ss 

With thy burning measures suit : 
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love. 

With the fervor of thy lute : 

Well may the stars be mute ! 

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this 40 

Is a world of sweets and sours; 

Our flowers are merely — flowers, 
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 

Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell 45 

Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, 
While a bolder note than this might swell 5 a 

From my lyre within the sky. 



42 2 American Literary Readings 

ULALUME 

The skies they were ashen and sober; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere, 

The leaves they were withering and sere; 
It was night in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid region of Weir: 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

I Here once, through an alley Titanic 

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — 
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 
These were days when my heart was volcanic 
As the scoriae rivers that roll, 
i As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 

In the ultimate climes of the pole, 
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
In the realms of the boreal pole. 

) Our talk had been serious and sober, 

But our thoughts they were palsied and sere, 
Our memories were treacherous and sere, 

For we knew not the month was October, 
And we marked not the night of the year, 
5 (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) 

We noted not the dim lake of Auber, 

(Though once we had journeyed down here). 

Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber 
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 
And star-dials pointed to mom, 



Ulalume 423 

As the star-dials hinted of mom, 
At the end of our path a Hquescent 

And nebulous lustre was bom, 
Out of which a miraculous crescent 

Arose with a duplicate horn, 
Astarte's bediamonded crescent 

Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said — "She is warmer than Dian: 

She rolls through an ether of sighs, 

She revels in a region of sighs : 
She has seen that the tears are not dry on 

These cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
And has come past the stars of the Lion 

To point us the path to the skies. 

To the Lethean peace of the skies : 
Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes: 
Come up through the lair of the Lion, 

With love in her luminous eyes." 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — "Sadly this star I mistrust, 

Her pallor I strangely mistrust : 
Oh, hasten! — oh, let us not linger! 

Oh, fly! — let us fly! — for we must." 
In terror she spoke, letting sink her 

Wings until they trailed in the dust; 
In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

Plumes till they trailed in the dust, 

Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. 

I replied — "This is nothing but dreaming: 

Let us on by this tremulous Hght ! ■^' 

Let us bathe in this crystalline light ! 



424 American Literary Readings 

Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming 

With hope and in beauty to-night :- 

See, — it flickers up the sky through the night! 

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 
And be sure it will lead us aright: 

We safely may trust to a gleaming 
That cannot but guide us aright. 
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
And tempted her out of her gloom. 
And conquered her scruples and gloom; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 
But were stopped by the door of a tomb, 
By the door of a legended tomb; 

And I said — "What is written, sweet sister, 
On the door of this legended tomb?" 
She replied — "Ulalume — Ulalume — 
'T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
As the leaves that were crisped and sere. 
As the leaves that were withering and sere, 

And I cried — "It was surely October 
On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed — I journeyed down here, 
That I brought a dread burden down here: 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah, what demon has tempted me here? 

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber, 
This misty mid region of Weir: 

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." 



Eldorado ' 425 

ELDORADO 

Gaily bedight, 

A gallant knight, 
In sunshine and in shadow, 

Had journeyed long, 

Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 

But he grew old, 

This knight so bold, 
And o'er his heart a shadow 

Fell as he found 

No spot of ground 
That looked like Eldorado. 

And, as his strength 

Failed him at length, 
He met a pilgrim shadow; 

"Shadow," said he, 

"Where can it be, 
This land of Eldorado?" 

"Over the Mountains 

Of the Moon, 
Down the Valley of the Shadow, 

Ride, boldly ride," 

The shade replied, — 
"If you seek for Eldorado!" 



HENRY TIMROD 

1829-1867 

Time has dealt both harshly and kindly with Henry 
Timrod. During his life this young South Carolinian 
suffered perhaps more than any one of his long-suffering 
fellow poets of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, 
but gradually his fame has expanded until now he is uni- 
versally recognized as one of the four or five major poets 
of the South, being placed second only to Lanier and Poe. 
His work at times undoubtedly reaches a higher level than 
that of his lifelong friend, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and the 
actual product of his thirty-seven years of ill-starred, 
poverty-stricken, disease-haunted life, though but an 
indication of what he might have accomplished under 
more favorable circumstances, yet gives him the right to 
an honorable place among the song-crowned sons of America. 

Like Paul Hayne, Henry Timrod came of an excellent 
family, who in Revolutionary times had settled in the 
aristocratic and cultured city of Charleston, South Caro- 
lina. There was less than a month's difference between 
the natal days of the two poets, Timrod being born on 
December 8, 1829, and Hayne on January i, 1830. The 
boys became acquainted while attending the same private 
school in Charleston, where they sat together for a time 
and became intimate cronies. 

Although Timrod is described as a shy and timid youth, 
slow of speech while quick to learn, he was a thoroughly 
likable lad, and was a general favorite among his play- 
mates. He took an active part in all outdoor sports 
and games, even in fighting, and he was fond of getting 
away from the city to take long rambles in the woods. 

When he was about seventeen years old Timrod entered 
the University of Georgia with bright prospects. He made 
a fairly good record as a student, especially in the literary 
and classic branches, but he spent much of his time in verse- 
making. His education was cut short through lack of 
financial means, however, and he left college without a 
degree. This was the first great disappointment of his life. 

[426] 




From a portrait in the possession of the Charleston 
Library Society. Courtesy of the trustees 

HENRY TIMROD 



Henry Timrod 427 

Returning to Charleston, he entered the office of the 
Honorable J. L. Petigru, one of the best-known lawyers 
of the city, to prepare for a professional career; but he 
soon found law work distasteful and his preceptor uncon- 
genial, and so he went out to earn his livelihood by tutor- 
ing in private families. Aspiring to a professorship in the 
classics, Timrod read diligently to prepare himself for this 
work. But he was born under an unlucky star, it seems, 
for he was always approaching very near to, but never 
quite realizing, his most cherished desires. He found no 
suitable opening for a successful teaching career, and so 
for about ten years he toiled on at private tutoring here 
and there, wherever he found work. 

All this time poetry was his constant companion and 
consolation. He contributed both prose and verse to 
southern literary journals, such as Russell's Magazine 
and the Southern Literary Messenger. He published a 
small volume of poems in i860, and as Hayne said, "a 
better first volume of the kind has seldom appeared any- 
where." In this volume were "The Lily Confidante," "A 
Vision of Poesy," and other worthy efforts. The book was 
well received by the reviewers, but there could not have 
been in the whole history of our country, perhaps, a more 
unpropitious moment for the publication of a volume of 
purely nature and personal lyrics. The people were in no 
mood to read love songs or disquisitions on the nature of 
poesy. Again we find disappointment and failure Timrod's 
portion, for there were few buyers of his modest volume, 
and consequently no material returns to the impecunious 
young author. 

But hope smiled anew, and Timrod threw himself with 
intense zeal into the approaching struggle between the 
sections. He was too frail physically to bear arms or 
undergo the hardships of military life, but he went to the 
front as a war correspondent for the Charleston Mercury, 
and was continually helping the southern cause by com- 
posing the fiery war songs which gave him such wide fame 
in those years of struggle and which won for him a place 
in the foremost rank of our war poets. His " Ethnogenesis," 
written in February, 1861, oh the birth of the Southern 
Confederacy at Montgomery, Alabama, is a magnificent 
ode, and except for the fact that it celebrates a "lost 
cause" there is no doubt that long ago it would have been 



428 American Literary Readings 

crowned as one of the supreme productions of our nation 
in this kind of poetry. By far the best-known and most 
highly praised of Timrod's longer poems, "The Cotton Boll," 
was written about the same time. Though more strictly 
a nature poem, it concludes with a strong patriotic appeal, 
and is sometimes classed as a war poem. His "Carolina" 
and " A Cry to Arms" are stirring war songs. These poems, and 
many others like them, were widely circulated and enthu- 
siastically received all over the South. So prominent had 
Timrod become as a representative southern poet that in 
1862 his friends proposed to bring out an illustrated edition 
of his poems in England, the artist Vizetelli, then war cor- 
respondent of the London Illustrated News, promising to 
supply the engravings. But in the stress of the war period 
the project fell through, and again, on the very verge of 
apparent success, our poet met his old foes, misfortune and 
disappointment . 

Early in 1864 Timrod accepted an editorial position 
on the South Carolinian of Columbia, South Carolina, and 
with this prospect for permanent employment he married 
Miss Kate Goodwin, an English girl. This lady was 
the ideal of many of his poetic fancies and the heroine 
of some of his best love poems. The long poem "Katie," 
which celebrates the beauty and charm of Miss Goodwin, 
is full of exquisite imagery and fine descriptive passages. 

Little more than a year of happiness was vouchsafed 
him. On December 24, 1864, was born to him a son, the 
"Little Willie" whom he mourns in a pathetic lyric in less 
than a year after the child's birth. After the death of 
his son the poet lost much of his hopefulness and buoyancy. 
General Sherman's army had destroyed the beautiful city 
of Columbia almost exactly one year after the date of 
Timrod's marriage, and there was nothing left to him but 
poverty and distress from that time on to the end of his 
life. He tried to bear up bravely, and in a letter to his 
friend Hayne in 1866 he humorously refers to the gradual 
sale of what little furniture and silverware that had been 
saved from the wreck, to meet the bare necessities of 
existence. "We have — let me see — yes, we have eaten 
two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several 
sofas, innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead." He 
continued his work on the Carolinian, — the paper had now 
been moved to Charleston, — but in a letter to Hayne he 



Henry Timrod 429 

stated that for four months he had not received a dollar 
of his promised salary. 

One brief respite came before the end, when in the 
Slimmer of 1867 Timrod, by the advice of his physicians 
and at the urgent solicitation of his old friend, went for 
two visits of about one month each to Copse Hill, the home 
of Paul Hamilton Hayne, who was now living in the pine 
barrens of Georgia about sixteen miles from Augusta. 
Hayne writes sympathetically of their comradeship dur- 
ing these visits, both in his introductory memoir in the 
1873 edition of Timrod's poems and in his beautiful reminis- 
cences of the poet in "Under the Pine" and "By the Grave 
of Henry Timrod." From this visit, though greatly revived 
in spirits and apparently in health also, Timrod returned 
home to die. On September thirteenth he wrote to Hayne 
that he had suffered a severe hemorrhage from the lungs, 
and this was speedily followed by others, still more severe. 
He died October 7, 1867. 

Since the publication, by the Timrod Memorial Society, 
of his poems (in 1S89), Timrod's grave in Trinity Church 
Cemetery, Columbia, which for many years remained 
unmarked, and for man 3^ more was marked only by a small 
shaft erected by a few of his admirers, has been crowned 
with a huge bowlder of gray granite. Historians of American 
literature have been drawn to give more prominence to 
Timrod's work, and what is quite as gratifying, his poetry 
is being read and studied more and more every year. 

(For appreciations of Timrod see the Introduction to the Memorial 
Volume of his Poems and the essay in the Library of Southern Liter- 
ature, Vol. XII.) 



SPRING 

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air 
Which dwells with all things fair, 
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain. 
Is with us once again. 

Out in the lonely woods the jasmine bums 
Its fragrant lamps, and turns 
Into a royal court with green festoons 
The banks of dark lagoons. 

In the deep heart of every forest tree 
The blood is all aglee. 

And there's a look about the leafless bowers 
As if they dreamed of flowers. 

Yet still on every side we trace the hand 
Of Winter in the land, 
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, 
Flushed by the season's dawn; 

Or where, like those strange semblances we find 
That age to childhood bind. 
The elm puts on, as if in Nature's scorn. 
The brown of autumn com. 

As yet the turf is dark, although you know 
That, not a span below, 

A thousand germs are groping through the gloom 
And soon will burst their tomb. 

Already, here and there, on frailest stems 
Appear some azure gems, 

[430] 



spring 43 1 

Small as might deck, upon a gala day, 
The forehead of a fay. 

In gardens you may note, amid the dearth. 
The crocus breaking earth; 

And, near the snowdrop's tender white and green 
The violet in its screen. 

But many gleams and shadows need must pass 
Along the budding grass, 
And weeks go by, before the enamored South 
Shall kiss the rose's mouth. 

Still there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn 
In the sweat airs of morn ; 
One almost looks to see the very street 
Grow purple at his feet. 

At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by, 
And brings, you know not why, 
A feeling as when eager crowds await. 
Before a palace gate 

' Some wondrous pageant ; and you scarce would start 
If from a beech's heart 

A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say 
" Behold me ! I am May ! " 

Ah ! who would couple thoughts of war and crime 
With such a blessed time ! 
Who in the west wind's aromatic breath 
Could hear the call of Death ! 

Yet not more surely shall the Spring awake 
The voice of wood and brake 
Than she shall rouse, for all her tranquil charms, 
A million men to arms. 



432 American Literary Readings 

There shall be deeper hues upon her plains 
Than all her sunlit rains, 
And every gladdening influence around, 
I Can summon from the ground. 

Oh ! standing on this desecrated mold, 
Methinks that I behold, 
Lifting her bloody daisies up to God, 
Spring kneeling on the sod, 

i And calling, with the voice of all her rills, 
Upon the ancient hills 

To fall and crush the tyrants and the slaves 
Who turn her meads to graves. 



ODE 

SUNG ON THE OCCASION OF DECORATING THE GRAVES 

OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD AT MAGNOLIA CEMETERY, 

CHARLESTON, S.C, 1867 
t 

I 

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves. 

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause; 
Though yet no marble column craves 

The pilgrim here to pause 

II 
In seeds of laurel in the earth 

The blossom of your fame is blown, 
And somewhere, waiting for its birth, 

The shaft is in the stone ! 

Ill 

Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years 

Which keep in trust your storied tombs, 



Ode 

Behold ! your sisters bring their tears, 
And these memorial blooms. 

IV 

Small tributes ! but your shades will smile 
More proudly on these wreaths to-day, 

Than when some cannon-moulded pile 
Shall overlook this bay. 

V 

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! 

There is no holier spot of ground 
Than where defeated valor lies. 

By mourning beauty crowned ! 



433 



15 



PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 

1830-1886 ' . 

Paul Hamilton Hayne, a grandson of the distinguished 
statesman and orator Robert Young Hayne, was born in 
Charleston, South Carolina, on New Year's Day, in 1830. 
His father. Lieutenant Paul Hamilton Hayne of the United 
States Navy, died when Paul was a mere infant, and the 
boy was brought up amid the wealth and luxury of his 
grandfather's home. He received careful training in the 
best schools of Charleston, and was graduated from 
Charleston College in 1850. 

Like many young southerners of good family, Hayne 
prepared himself for the bar, but the call of poetry was 
stronger than that of the law. He became an associate 
editor of the Southern Literary Gazette, and later co-founder 
and editor of Russell's Magazine, which he made a decided 
success. He published a volume of poems in 1855, and 
three other volumes followed — Sonnets and Other Poems 
(1857), Avolio and Other Poems (i860). Legends and Lyrics 
(1872), and a complete edition of his poems, arranged by 
himself and published with an introductory biographical 
sketch by his friend and fellow poet, Margaret J. Preston, 
about four years before his death on July 6, 1886. 

The Civil War came on just in time to interfere seri- 
ously with the development of his genius and the spread 
of his fame. True, he threw himself whole-heartedly into 
the struggle, writing a number of good war poems; but his 
muse was better suited to the home, the winter fireside, 
and the summer forest retreat than to the battle field, the 
march, and the camp. In spite of his delicate constitution 
and frail physique he voluntereed his services to the Con- 
federate cause, becoming an aide on Governor Pickens's 
staff. 

Home, library, wealth, all were swept away by the war. 
When peace came, Hayne moved with his devoted wife 
and only son, William Hamilton (who is himself a poet of no 
mean ability), into the pine barrens of Georgia, and settled 
in a little cottage — or, rather, log cabin — near Augusta. 

[434] 









F^ow a photograph. 
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE 



Courtesy of the poet's son, 
William Hamilton Hayne 



Paul Hamilton Hayne 435 

In this primitive home, which he named "Copse Hill," 
he spent the remainder of his life, striving to build up 
his health, and devoting himself exclusively to literature 
for a livelihood. His poems and prose articles found a 
ready reception in the magazines and periodicals of the 
North as well as in those of the South, but the remunera- 
tion was small and the family was forced to live under 
the severest economy. 

Hayne's lyric genius has been highly praised, but he 
is still little more than a name to many readers North 
and South. He wrote a large amount of. poetry of a 
singularly uniform excellence, but no single poem so far 
superior to the great mass of his work as to make itself 
particularly noteworthy or noticeable. Poets of far less 
literary merit are more generally known, through some 
single popular work, while Hayne, for the very reason of 
his uniform excellence, is neglected. He was not strikingly 
original in his poetry, but he had an individual note, and 
his art was rarely at fault. He deserves a more generous 
and general recognition than he has received. His longer 
narrative poems and his dramatic pieces are not without 
merit, but his best work is undoubtedly in the purer lyric 
and descriptive types. Especially noteworthy are his 
sonnets, of which he wrote considerably more than one 
hundred. Maurice Thompson said: "As a sonneteer, 
Hayne was strong, ranking well with the best in America"; 
and again, "I can pick twenty of Hayne's sonnets to equal 
almost any in the language"; and Professor Painter adds, 
"It is hardly too much to claim that Hayne is the prince of 
American sonneteers." 

Paul Hamilton Hayne lived as he wrote — simply, purely, 
bravely. The latter part of his life was marked by struggle 
and heartache, privation and disease; yet he kept up his 
courage and maintained a calm, sweet temper to the end, 
making of his own life, perhaps, a more beautiful poem than 
any he ever penned. 

(Perhaps the best essays on Hayne are those by Margaret Junkin 
Preston in the latest edition of his poems [1882] and by WilUam 
Hamilton Hayne in Lippincott's Magazine for December, 1892.) 



ASPECTS OF THE PINES 

Tall, somber, grim, against the morning sky 
They rise, scarce touched by melancholy airs, 

Which stir the fadeless foliage dreamfully. 
As if from realms of mystical despairs. 

Tall, somber, grim, they stand with dusky gleams 
Brightening to gold within the woodland's core. 

Beneath the gracious noontide's tranquil beams — 
But the weird winds of morning sigh no inore. 

A stillness, strange, divine, ineffable, 

Broods' round and o'er them in the wind's surcease. 
And on each tinted copse and shimmering dell 

Rests the mute rapture of deep-hearted peace. 

Last, simset comes — the solemn joy and might 

Borne from the west when cloudless day declines — 

Low, flutelike breezes sweep the waves of light, 
And Ufting dark green tresses of the pines, 

Till every lock is luminous — gently float. 
Fraught with hale odors up the heavens afar 

To faint when twilight on her virginal throat 
Wears for a gem the tremulous vesper star. 



[436] 



Composed in Autumn 437 

COMPOSED IN AUTUMN 

With these dead leaves stripped from a witherea tree, 

And slowly fluttering round us, gentle friend. 

Some faithless soul a sad presage might blend; 

To me they bring a happier augury ; 

Lives that shall bloom in genial sunshine free. 

Nursed by the spell Love's dews and breezes send. 

And when a kindly Fate shall speak the end, 

Down dropping in Time's autumn silently; 

All hopes fulfilled, all passions duly blessed, 

Life's cup of gladness drained, except the lees, 

No more to fear or long for, but the rest 

Which crowns existence with its dreamless ease; 

Thus when our days are ripe, oh ! let us fall 

Into that perfect Peace which waits for all! 



SIDNEY LANIER 

1842-1881 

In one of his earlier poems, called "Life and Song," Sidney 
Lanier says that none of the poets has ever yet so perfectly 
united the ideal of his minstrelsy with the reality of his daily 
life as to cause the world in wonder to exclaim: 

' ' His song was only living aloud. 

His work, a singing with his hand!" 

But so nearly did Lanier himself come to a realization of his 
ideal of "a perfect life in perfect labor writ," that the ever- 
growing circle of his admirers is ready to place him among 
that very small nimiber of the gifted sons of genius who 
have nobly conceived and nobly striven toward the ideal. 
Outwardly his life was a hard one. The story of his struggle 
against poverty, disease, and adversity often has been told, 
but not too often, for it is as inspiring as it is pathetic. It 
is the old, old story of genius making its way in spite of all 
obstructions. 

Sidney Lanier was born at Macon, Georgia, February 3, 
1842. His father, Robert S. Lanier, was a fairly successful 
lawyer who was able to keep his family in that moderate 
degree of comfort which seems conducive to the highest 
happiness in home life. The house in which Sidney was 
born was the home at that time of his grandfather Sterling 
Lanier, and when this first grandson was a few months old, 
his parents moved to Griffin, Georgia, returning to Macon 
a year or two later. Here their parlor was later the scene 
of many a hospitable gathering of friends and neighbors in 
impromptu family musical entertainments. The two boys, 
as well as the mother, were talented in music, and each 
contributed to the home concerts. The Laniers had in pre- 
vious generations been distinguished for their attainments 
in various kinds of artistic expression, particularly in paint- 
ing and in music. Sidney early showed his remarkable 
musical talent, becoming a performer on almost all kinds 
of instruments at an early age, learning with that ease and 
rapidity which come. only from natural genius. He was so 

[438] 




SIDNEY LANIER 



Sidney Lanier 439 

fascinated by the music of the violin that he would some- 
times fall into deep reveries or trances as he played. His 
father, fearing the power of the instrument over the boy and 
not wishing him to become a professional musician, forbade 
him to practice on it; and Sidney turned to the instrument 
which after the violin most appealed to him, the flute. On 
this he produced marvelous effects,^ not only fascinating his 
schoolmates at Oglethorpe College* and his fellow soldiers 
during the Civil War, but later earning as a professional the 
distinction of being the greatest flute-player in the world. 
The sweetness, mellowness, and passionate appeal of the 
tones of his flute are said to have held all hearers spellbound. 
He could imitate bird notes with ease, and was also able 
to obtain in his extemporized variations and embellish- 
ments tones suggestive of those of the violin. He was 
not merely a virtuoso, but a composer as well. 

But later on we find the conviction taking possession of 
Lanier that he must be a poet. He writes to his father, 
"Gradually I find that my whole soul is merging itself into 
this business of writing." He had begun while at college to 
test his powers as a writer. He was ambitious to prepare 
himself by study in Germany for a college professorship, but 
the war came on, and like many another talented young 
southerner, he threw himself with great enthusiasm into the 
cause of the Confederacy. He entered the army as a private, 
and rather than accept promotion which would separate him 
from his brother Cliftord, he remained such. Near the close 
of the war, when both he and Clifford were put in charge of 
blockade-running vessels, Sidney was captured and confined 
for five months in the Federal prison at Point Lookout. 
During the war, Lanier did not neglect his mental develop- 
ment. He read all the books he could lay hands on, studied 
German, translated a few poems from foreign languages, 
and played on his beloved flute whenever he had an oppor- 
tunity to do so. He began work on a novel in which he made 
use of some of the experiences and aspirations of this period. 
This immature production was published shortly after the 
war, under the title of Tiger Lilies. 

Returning home from prison just in time to see his 
mother before her death, he sadly set to work to make 
a living for himself and thus to help retrieve the broken 
fortunes of the family. He began teaching as a tutor on a 
plantation near Macon, and then he became a clerk in the 



440 American Literary Readings 

old Exchange Hotel at Montgomery, Alabama. In 1867 
he accepted the principalship of the village school at Pratt- 
ville, Alabama, and it was while he was occupying this 
position that he married Miss Mary Day of Macon, Georgia. 
During the first year of his married life Lanier suffered his 
first prostration from hemorrhage of the lungs. To this dis- 
tressful period belong several Reconstruction outcries, of 
which only two, "Tyranny" and "The Raven Days," 
were included in the 1884 edition of his poems, but several 
others, notably "Our Hills," are included in the latest 
edition of his complete Poems (19 16). Some years later the 
rich emotions incident to his love, courtship, and marriage 
blossomed forth into many beautiful tributes to the object 
of his lifelong devotion. No more exquisite love poem, no 
finer tribute to a wife, is to be found in our literature than 
"My Springs." 

After his marriage, Lanier decided to become a lawyer 
in order to be able to provide more adequately for his family. 
He went to Macon to study with the firm of which his father 
was a member, and he was shortly afterwards admitted to the 
bar. Though his success was remarkable and immediate, 
he did not practice long, for the demands of the legal pro- 
fession were destructive of his now feeble vitality, a public 
address being likely to induce hemorrhage, and prolonged 
desk work a steady lowering of his strength at all points. 
And yet he felt chained by moral obligation to consent to his 
father's urgency to continue in his law work for the sake of 
insuring his family's support. At last, after five years of 
painful sacrifice, disease freed him to devote himself to his 
beloved arts, music and poetry. He said he had in his heart 
a thousand songs that were oppressing him because they 
remained unsung. Relinquishing his law practice, he 
sought health by rest and travel. He spent some time in 
San Antonio i Texas, in the winter of 1872, and here he 
made the first notable public display of his remarkable 
talent for flute playing. He wrote some for publication, 
but the best products of this period are his tender love 
letters to his wife. In fact, Lanier was one of the finest letter 
writers of the nineteenth century. The charm and fullness 
with which the poet expressed himself by means of the 
delicate art of personal correspondence have rarely been 
equaled and never surpassed. 

The next year he determined to go to the North or East, 



Sidney Lanier 441 

where he could find encouragement and opportunity to 
devote himself to the twin arts of music and poetry. He was 
engaged as first flute in the Peabody Symphony Concerts 
in Baltimore, and for the remaining nine years of his life he 
reveled in the musical and scholarly atmosphere of this and 
other eastern cities. He soon made warm friends of many 
notable persons, such as Bayard Taylor, Charlotte Cushman, 
Gibson Peacock of Philadelphia, Leopold Damrosch, Presi- 
dent Oilman, and others. Again he was under the necessity 
of being separated from his family; but while these enforced 
periods of separation were extremely painful to the poet and 
his wife, the general public may count them fortunate, in that 
they were the occasion for some of the most beautiful of his 
letters on music and kindred arts. 

The later years of the poet's life, while consciously devoted 
to art, were a struggle against poverty and disease. In the 
summer of 1876-187 7 his health became so greatly impaired 
that his physicians and friends prevailed on him to go to 
Tampa, Florida, to recuperate. In the leisure of this visit 
Lanier produced many notable poems, among them being 
"Tampa Robins," "Beethoven," "The Waving of the 
Corn," "The Song of the Chattahoochee," "The Stirrup 
Cup," "An Evening Song," "The Mocking-Bird." On his 
return to Baltimore in the spring, he tried to find some 
employment to supplement the meager income from his posi- 
tion in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. All the efforts 
of himself and his friends seemed of no avail. It was at this 
time that what Professor Mims calls "perhaps the most 
pathetic words in all his letters" were written by the poet: 
"Altogether, it seems as if there was n't any place for me in 
the world, and if it were not for May [his wife] I should 
certainly quit it, in mortification at being so useless." 

Finally a friend hit upon the idea of organizing a private 
class for a series of lectures on English poetry. Lanier had 
been taking every advantage of the excellent libraries and 
opportunities for culture in Baltimore, and he had developed 
rapidly under the inspiration of the literary and artistic life 
of that city. He was reading deeply into the Old and Middle 
English and the Elizabethan writers. His sympathetic 
interpretations attracted a goodly number of students to 
his first class, and the success of these private lectures soon 
gave him an opportunity to present the results of his inves- 
tigations in a regular series of lectures in Johns Hopkins 



442 American Literary Readings 

University. It was in 1879 that President Gilman appointed 
him to a lectureship in English literature. 

During all this time Lanier was turning out many excellent 
works, both creative and editorial. His Boy's Froissart, 
Boy's King Arthur, Boy's Percy, Boys Mahinogion are still 
standard juvenile books. He was gradually working out 
in concrete examples of poetic composition his theories of the 
interrelationship of music and poetry. Poems like "The 
Symphony," "The Song of the Chattahoochee," "The 
Marshes of Glynn," "Sunrise," almost justify these theories, 
though later critics, while acknowledging the fascination and 
suggestiveness of The Science of English Verse, have generally 
refuted the extremes to which the author presses his theories 
of the interrelationship between the two arts. 

In i83o Lanier faithfully filled his engagements at the uni- 
versity, but it is said that his hearers were in constant dread 
lest each hour should be his last. It was only by the con- 
quering power of his will that he kept himself alive at all. 
He rode to the hall in a closed carriage, and sat during the 
hour, being unable to stand to deliver his lectures. In 1881 
he sought relief in the mountains near Asheville in North 
Carolina. His father and his brother Clifford were with 
him for several weeks, but only his wife was there when the 
end came. Mr. William Hayes Ward, in his memorial essay, 
which is attached as introduction to the volume of Lanier's 
Poems, quotes Mrs. Lanier's own words: 

"We are left alone with one another. On the last night 
of the summer comes a change. His love and immortal 
will hold off the destroyer of our summer yet one more week, 
until the forenoon of September 7th, and then falls the frost, 
and that unfaltering will renders its supreme submission to 
the adored will of God." 

He was buried in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, 
the beloved city of his adoption. 

The present editor's volume, Southern Literary Readings, Rand 
McNally & Company, Chicago, contains, in addition to "Song of the 
Chattahoochee," three other poetical selections, "The Ballad of Trees 
and the Master," "My Springs," and a part of "Corn." 

(The most satisfactory life of Lanier is that by Edwin Mims. 
Other noteworthy studies are those by Morgan Callaway, Jr., in his 
Select Poems of Sidney Lanier, and by Henry Nelson Snyder in his 
volume on the spiritual message of Lanier.) 



SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain, 
Run the rapid and leap the fall. 
Split at the rock and together again, 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide. 
And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain • 

Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. 

All down the hills of Habersham, 

All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried Abide, abide, 
The willful waterweeds held me thrall. 
The laving laurel turned my tide, 
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, 
The dewberry dipped for to work delay. 
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, 

Here in the hills of Habersham, 

Here in the valleys of Hall. 

High o'er the hills of Habersham, 

Veiling the valleys of Hall, 
The hickory told me manifold 
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall 
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold. 
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine, 
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign. 
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold 

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, 

These glades in the valleys of Hall. 

[443] 



444 American Literary Readings 

And oft in the hills of Habersham, 

And oft in the valleys of Hall, 
The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone 
Did bar me .of passage with friendly brawl, 
And many a luminous jewel lone 
■ — Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, 
Ruby, garnet and amethyst — ■ 
Made lures with the lights of streaming stone 

In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, 
I In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, 

And oh, not the valleys of Hall 
Avail : I am fain for to water the plain. 
Downward the voices of Duty call — 
i Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn. 
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 
And the lordly main from beyond the plain 

Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 
) Calls through the valleys of Hall. 




From a photograph by Paul Thompson, N.Y. 
O. HENRY 



O. HENRY 
1862-1910 

William Sydney Porter, known to the general public almost 
entirely b}'- his pen name of 0. Henry, was born in Greens- 
boro, North Carolina, September 11, 1862. He grew up in 
the typical fashion of the moderately well-to-do people of the 
post-belltmi period in the Carolinas. He attended the ele- 
mentary private school conducted by his aunt, Miss Evelina 
Porter, to whose training he attributes his love for story- 
telling. He became a voracious reader, especially between 
the ages of thirteen and nineteen. At sixteen he left school 
and became a clerk in a Greensboro drugstore. In 1881 he 
set out to Texas in company with Dr. J. H. Hall, eagerly 
seizing the opportunity to get a touch of western life on a 
sheep ranch in La Salle County, Texas. Here he remained 
about two years, lounging around, working with the sheep, 
and amusing his friends through his gift at sketching, and by 
his inexhaustible fund of stories. It is said that in these 
leisurely days he read Webster's Unabridged Dictionary so 
assiduously that he could spell and define practically every 
word in it. 

About 1883 Will Porter, as he was familiarly called, moved 
to Austin, and became an intimate member of the family 
of Mr. Joe Harrell, whose sons recall many humorous car- 
toons, remarkable exhibitions of spelling and defining 
words, and one or two local love stories which Porter wrote 
at this time. He held several clerical positions, one among 
them being a draftsman's place in the Texas State Land 
Office. Presently he fell in love with, and was married to, 
Miss Athol Estes. After four years in the Land Office he 
became paying and receiving teller in an Austin bank, a 
position which eventually led to entanglements which put 
him under a cloud for several years. O. Henry's biographer. 
Professor C. Alphonso Smith, emphatically declares that 
Porter was guiltless of the charges made against him and was 
clearly the victim of circumstances. At any rate his experi- 
ences during this period gave him an insight into the life of 
the underworld which he made good use of in his later stories. 

[445] 



446 American Literary Readings 

O. Henry was inevitably to become a writer. The whole 
trend of his life seemed to lead unerringly to humorous 
caricature and short-story writing. While he was working 
for the bank he became editor-owner and chief contributor 
and illustrator of a breezy weekly paper called The Rolling 
Stone. This paper "rolled" for nearly a year, as O. Henry 
expressed it, and then stopped because it had begun to 
gather moss. Porter was forced to resign from the bank, 
and he removed to Houston, where he obtained a position 
as reporter on the Daily Post. A little later, to avoid em- 
barrassment, he went away to Central America. But when 
he learned that his wife was hopelessly ill with tuberculosis, 
he returned to Austin and faced a charge of embezzlement. 

It was while he was in New Orleans on his return 
from Central America that he began to write under the 
pen name of O. Henry. During a prison life of three 
years he wrote a number of stories which were accepted 
and published by good magazines. When he was released, 
he went to Pittsburgh, where his daughter Margaret was 
living with her grandmother. Here he continued to write, 
and presently was selling his stories regularly at one 
hundred dollars apiece to Ainslee's Magazine. It was in 
igo2 that he removed to New York to devote himself 
to authorship. In 1904 he undertook to furnish to the 
New York World a story a week for an entire year, and 
he renewed the contract in 1905. The success of his first 
volume. Cabbages and Kings (1904), a loosely connected 
series of stories based on his Central American experiences, 
had already made his name well known, and from this period 
on to his death on June 5, 19 10, O. Henry was, so far as 
popularity goes, the foremost short-story writer of America. 
His stories were collected in twelve volumes between 1906 
and 191 1 ; Rolling Stones, a supplemental volume of fugitive 
material, some of it of biographic interest, being collected 
in 19 1 2 by his friend and literary executor, Harry P. Steger. 
The remaining titles of his books are The Four Millions 
(1906), being stories of New York life; Heart of the West 
(1907), being largely stories of life in Texas; The Gentle 
Grafter (1908), being mostly stories of the underworld; 
The Trimmed Lamp (1907); The Voice of the City (1908); 
Strictly Business (1908); Roads of Destiny (1909); Options 
(1909); Whirligigs (19 10) and Sixes and Sevens (191 1), 
being collections of stories of miscellaneous types and 



0. Henry 447 

localities, but dealing mainly with life in N w York City. 
The chief qualities of O. Henry's stories are realism 
touched with the glamour of romance, piquancy and clever- 
ness of style and plot, a raciness of language with a large 
intermixture of slang, a real sympathy and true compre- 
hension of the varied types of our democratic life, especially 
of the middle and lower classes, and an unfailing sense for 
the humorous and pathetic in every conceivable situation. 
He broke most of the conventional canons for correct 
writing, and yet he was a remarkably good technician in his 
own type of story. He says that the first rule in writing 
stories is to write to please yourself, and there is no second 
rule. The most striking individual characteristic of his 
stories as a whole is the surprise ending. Guess, prepare 
for it', watch for it as you may, you will inevitably be brought 
up with a laugh and a surprised feeling at the close of nearly 
every one of his more than one hundred and fifty short stories. 
Mr. Hyder E. Rollins in writing of this characteristic of 
O. Henry's makes a happy comparison. "Children play 
' crack-the-whip ' not for the fun of the long preliminary 
run, but for the excitement of the final sharp twist that 
throws them off their feet. So adults read O. Henry, 
impatiently glancing at the swiftly moving details in pleased 
expectancy of a surprise ending." But O. Henry's stories 
have more in them than the mere cleverness of their surprise 
endings. They are drawn from real life, and there is in them 
a breath of actuality and truth, an interpretative power, a 
charm, a breadth of sympathy which lifts them into the realm 
of art. There is no longer any question of the security of 
this writer's place among the short-story writers of the 
world. If Poe said the first word on the modern short 
story, O. Henry has said the latest. As Professor Smith 
admirably summarizes, "0. Henry has humanized the short 
story." 

■ (0. Henry Biography by C. Alphonso Smith has just been published.) 



THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF 

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We 
were down South, in Alabama — Bill Driscoll and myself — 
when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill after- 
ward expressed it, "during a moment of temporary mental 

5 apparition" ; but we didn't find that out till later. 

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and 
called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as 
undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever 
clustered around a Maypole. 

10 Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dol- 
lars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull 
off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We 
talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philopro- 
genitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities; 

IS therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought 

■ to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send 

reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such 

things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with 

anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lacka- 

20 daisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly 
Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good. 

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent 
citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable 
and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collectionr 

25 plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with 
bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the 
magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch 
a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down 
for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait 

30 till I tell you. 

About two miles from Siimmit was a little mountain, 

[448] 



The Ransom of Red Chief 449 

covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of 
this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. 

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old 
Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks 35 
at a kitten on the opposite fence. 

• "Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a 
bag of candy and a nice ride?" 

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick. 

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," 40 
says Bill, climbing over the wheel. 

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon 
bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the 
buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and 
I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove 4s 
the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had 
hired it, and walked back to the mountain. 

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and 
bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind 
the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was 50 
watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers 
stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come 
up, and says : 

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of 
Red Chief, the terror of the plains?" 55 

"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers 
and examining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing 
Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic- 
lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I 'm Old Hank, 
the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I 'm to be scalped at eo 
daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard." 

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. 
The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that 
he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me 
Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves es 
returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake 
at the rising of the sun. 



4SO American Literary Readings 

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon 
and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during- 

70 dinner speech something like this : 

" I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a 
pet 'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go 
to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's 
speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these 

75 woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving 
make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes 
your nose so red, Hank ? My father has lots of money. Are 
the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. 
I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a 

80 string. Do oxen make any noise ? Why are oranges round ? 
Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave ? Amos Murray 
has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish 
can't. How many does it take to make twelve?" 

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky 

85 redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth 
of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. 
Now and then he would let out a warwhoop that made Old 
Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized 
from the start. 

90 "Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go 
home?" 

' ' Aw, what for ? ' ' says he. "I don't have any fun at home. 
I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take 
me back home again. Snake-eye, will you?" 

95 "Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave 
a while." 

"All right ! " says he. *' That'll be fine. I never had such 
fun in all my life." 

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down 

100 some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. 

We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for 

three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and 

screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the 



The Ransom of Red Chief 451 

fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to 
his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw 105 
band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed 
that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a 
ferocious pirate with red hair. 

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful 
screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, no 
or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set 
of vocal organs — they were simply indecent, terrifying, 
humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see 
ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, 
desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at day- 115 
break. 

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was 
sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. 
In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing 
bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to 120 
take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been 
pronounced upon him the evening before. 

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down 
again. But, from that moment. Bill's spirit was broken. 
He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an 125 
eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed 
off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that 
Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the 
rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat 
up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock. 130 

"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill. 

" Me ? " says I . " Oh , I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. 
I thought sitting up would rest it." 

"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was 
to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And 135 
he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? 
Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little 
imp like that back home?" 

"Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind 



452 American Literary Readings 

140 that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and 
cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and 
reconnoitre." 

I went up on the peak of the Httle mountain and ran my 
eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I 

145 expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed 
with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for 
the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful 
landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. 
Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither 

150 and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted 
parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepi- 
ness pervading that section of the external outward surface 
of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. " Perhaps," says 
I to myself, "it has not yet been discovered that the wolves 

155 have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven 
help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the mountain to 
breakfast. 

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the 
side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash 

160 him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut. 

"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained 
Bill, "and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his 
ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?" 

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up 

165 the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No 
man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for 
it. You better beware!" 

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with 
strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes out- 

170 side the cave unwinding it. 

"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You 
don't think he '11 run away, do you, Sam? " 

"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a 
home body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the 

175 ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around 



The Ransom of Red C}ii._ 453 

Stimmit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they 
haven't reaHzed yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's 
spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. 
Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a . 
message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars iso 
for his return." 

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David 
might have emitted when he knocked out the champion 
Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of 
his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head. i85 

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from 
Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A 
niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just 
behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell 
in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the 190 
dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his 
head for half an hour. 

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: 
" Sam, do you knew who my favourite Biblical character is? " 

"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses 105 
presently." 

"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave 
me here alone, will you, Sam?" 

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his 
freckles rattled. 200 

"If you don't behave," says I, " I '11 take you straight home. 
Now, are you going to be good, or not?" 

"I was only funning," says he sullenly. "I didn't mean 
to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for ? I '11 behave. 
Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me 205 
play the Black Scout to-day." 

"I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and 
Mr. Bill to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I 'm 
going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and 
make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, 210 
or home you go, at once." 



454 American Literary Readings 

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill 
aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village 
three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about 

215 how the , kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, 
I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man 
Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how 
it should be paid. 

"You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without 

220 batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood — in poker 
games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and 
cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that 
two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You 
won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?" 

225 "I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You 
must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And 
now we'll write the letter to old Dorset." 

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter 
while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, 

230 strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill 
begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred 
dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," 
says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental 
affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human 

235 for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty- 
pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a 
chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the 
difference up to me." 

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter 

240 that ran this way: 

Ehenezer Dorset, Esq.: 

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. 
It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt 
to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can 
245 have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen 
hundred dollars in large bills for his return ; the money to be 
left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box 
as your reply — as hereinafter described. If you agree to these 



The Ransom of Red Chief 455 

terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger 
to-night at half -past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek, 250 
on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about 
a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field 
on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, 
opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box. 

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return 255 
immediately to Summit. 

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our 
demand as stated, you will never see your boy again. 

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to 
you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, 260 
and if you do not accede to them no further communication 
will be attempted. 

Two Desperate Men. 

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. 
As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says: 265 

"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout 
while you was gone." 

" Play it, of course," says I. " Mr. Bill will play with you. 
What kind of a game is it?" 

"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to 270 
ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are 
coming. I 'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be 
the Black Scout." 

"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess 
Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages." 275 

"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid sus- 
piciously. 

"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on 
yoiir hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade 
without a hoss ? " 2 s 

"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get 
the scheme going. Loosen up." 

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his 
eye like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap. 

"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky 285 
manner of voice. 



456 American Literary Readings 

"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have 
to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!" 
The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels 

290 in his side. 

"For Heaven's sake," gays Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as 
soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more 
than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I '11 get up 
and warm you good." 

295 I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around, the post- 
office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to 
trade. One whisker^ndo says that he hears Summit is all 
upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having 
been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I 

300 bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price 
of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came 
away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by 
in an hour to take the mail on to Summit. 

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to 

305 be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked 
a yodel or two, but there was no response. 

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to 
await developments. 

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill 

310 wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind 
him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad 
grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped 
his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about 
eight feet behind him. 

315 "Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, 
but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine 
proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time 
when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The 
boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was 

320 martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death 
rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None 
of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures 



The Ransom of Red Chief 457 

as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of 
depredation; but there came a limit." 

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him. 325 

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, 
not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, 
I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And 
then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there 
was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways and 330 
what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can 
only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes 
and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks 
my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I've 
got two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized. 335 

' ' But he's gone" — continues Bill — ' ' gone home. I showed 
him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet 
nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; 
but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse." 

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable 340 
peace and growing content on his rose-pinl< features. 

" Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, 
is there?" 

"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and 
accidents. Why?" 345 

"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look 
behind you." 

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and 
sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly 
at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his 350 
mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put 
the whole job through immediately and that we would 
get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset 
fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to 
give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play 355 
the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt 
a little better. 

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger 



458 American Literary Readings 

of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend 
3 60 itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the 

answer was to be left — and the money later on — was close 

to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang 

of constables should be watching for any one to come for the 

note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or 
3 65 in the road. But no, sirree ! At half-past eight I was up in 

that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the 

messenger to arrive. 

Exactly on time, a half -grown boy rides up the road on a 

bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence- 
3 70 post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away 

again back toward Summit. 

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. 

I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till 

I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half 
3 75 an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it 

to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the 

sum and substance of it was this : 

Two Desperate Men. 

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard 

380 to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think 

you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you 

a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will 

accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred 

and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your 

385 hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours 

believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they 

would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. 

Very respectfully, 

Ebenezer Dorset. 

390 "Great pirates of Penzance!" says I; "of all the impu- 
dent — " 

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most 
appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb 
or a talking brute. 

395 "Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, 



The Ransom of Red Chief 459 

after all ? We 've got the money. One more night of this 
kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a 
thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift 
for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let 
the chance go, are you?" 400 

"Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb 
has somewhat got on my nerves too. We '11 take him home, 
pay the ransom and make our get-away." 

We took him home that night. We got him to go by tell- 
ing him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle 405 
and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt 
bears the next day. 

It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's 
front door. Just at the moment when I should have been 
abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under 4io 
the tree, according to the original proposition. Bill was 
counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's 
hand. 

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at 
home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened him- 415 
self as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him 
away gradually, like a porous plaster. 

"HoAv long can you hold him?" asks Bill. 

"I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but 
-I think I can promise you ten minutes." 420 

"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the 
Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be 
legging it trippingly for the Canadian border." 

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good 
a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of 425 
Summit before I could catch up with him. 



THE LAST LEAF 

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets 
have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips 
called "places." These "places" make strange angles and 
curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist 
5 once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Sup- 
pose a collector with a bill for paints, paper, and canvas 
should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself 
coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! 
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon 

10 came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth- 
century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they 
imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from 
Sixth avenue, and became a "colony." 

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and 

15 Johnsy had their studio. " Johnsy " was familiar for Joanna. 
One was from Maine; the other from California. They 
had met at the table d'hote of an Eighth street " Delmonico's," 
and found their tastes in art, chicory salad, and bishop 
sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. 

20 That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, 
whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the 
colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. 
Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his 
victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze 

25 of the narrow and moss-grown "places." 

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric 
old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned 
by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red- 
fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and 

30 she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, look- 
ing through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank 
side of the next brick house. 

[460] 



The Last LeaJ 461 

One moniing the busy doctor invited Sue into the hall- 
way with a shaggy, gray eyebrow. 

"She has one chance in — let us say, ten," he said; as he 
shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And 
that chance is for her to want to live. This way people 
have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker makes the 
entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady has made 
up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she any- 
thing on her mind?" 

"She — she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," 
said Sue. 

"Paint? — bosh! Has she anything on' her mind worth 
thinking about twice — a man, for instance?" 

"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her 
voice. "Is a man worth — but, no, doctor; there is nothing 
of the kind." 

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I 
will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my 
efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins 
to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 
fifty per cent, from the curative power of medicines. If 
you will get her to ask one question about the new winter 
styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five 
chance for her, instead of one in ten." 

After the doctor had gone. Sue went into the workroom 
and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered 
into Johnsy's room with her drawing' board, whistling 
ragtime. 

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bed- 
clothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped 
whistling, thinking she was asleep. 

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing 
to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave 
their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories 
that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. 

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horse-show riding 



462 American Literary Readings 

trousers and a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho 

70 cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She 
went quickly to the bedside. 

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the 
window and counting — counting backward. 

"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven"; and then 

75 "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven," almost 
together. 

Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there 
to count ? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and 
the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An 

80 old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed 
half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had 
stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches 
clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. 
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue. 

85 "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're 
falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hun- 
dred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it 's 
easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now." 
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie." 

90 "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I 
■must go, too. I 've known that for three days. Did n't 
the doctor tell you?" 

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, 
with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do 

95 with your getting well ? And you used to love that vine so, 
you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor 
told me this morning that your chances for getting well real 
soon were — let's see exactly what he said — he said the 
chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a 

100 chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street 
cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth 
now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell 
the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, 
and pork chops for her greedy self." 



The Last Leaf 463 

"You need n't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping 105 
her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, 
I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to 
see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too." 

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you 
promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the no 
window until I am done vf orking ? I must hand those draw- 
ings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the 
shade down." 

"Could n't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, 
coldly. 115 

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides, I 
don't want 3^ou to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." 

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, 
closing her eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, 
"because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of wait- 120 
ing. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold 
on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of 
those poor, tired leaves." 

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to 
be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone 125 
a minute. Don't try to move till I come back." 

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground 
floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael 
Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr 
along the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. uo 
Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near 
enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had 
been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never 
yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing 
except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or 135 
advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to 
those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price 
of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked 
of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce 
little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, un 



464 American Literary Readings 

and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to 
protect the two young artists in the studio above. 

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries 
in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank 

145 canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty- 
five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She 
told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, 
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when 
her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. 

150 Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, 
shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. 
"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der 
foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a con- 
founded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I vill 

155 not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. 
Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of 
her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Johnsy." 

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has 
left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very 

160 well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you 
need n't. But I think you are a horrid old — old flibberti- 
gibbet." 

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who 
said I vill not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an 

165 hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott ! 
dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy 
shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve 
shall all go avay. Gott! yes." 

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue 

170 pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned 
Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out 
the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked 
at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, 
cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in 

175 his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an 
upturned kettle for a rock. 



The Last Leaf 465 

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning 
she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the 
drawn green shade. 

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper, iso 

Wearily Sue obeyed. 

But, lo ! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that 
had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out 
against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the 
vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated iss 
edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it 
hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the 
ground. 

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would 
surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall 190 
to-day, and I shall- die at the same time." 

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to 
the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. 
What would I do?" 

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all 195 
the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its 
mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her 
more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to 
friendship and to earth were loosed. 

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they 200 
could see the lone i\'y leaf clinging to its stem against the 
wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind 
was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the win- 
dows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. 

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, com- 205 
manded that the shade be raised. 

The ivy leaf was still there. 

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she 
called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas 
stove. 210 

" I 've been a bad girl, Sudie, "said Johnsy. "Something 
has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked 



466 American Literary Readings 

I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little 
broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and — no; 

215 bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows 
about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." 
An hour later she said, 

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." 
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse 

220 to go into the hallway as he left. 

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shak- 
ing hand in his. "With good nursing you '11 win. And now 
I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his 
name is — some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, 

225 too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. 
There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day 
to be made more comfortable." 

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of 
danger. You've won. Nutrition and care now — that's 

230 all." 

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy 
lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless 
woolen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows 
and all. 

235 "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. 
"Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. 
He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the 
morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with 
pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. 

240 They could n't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful 
night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a 
ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some 
scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors 
mixed on it, and — look out the window, dear, at the last ivy 

245 leaf on the wall. Did n't you wonder why it never fluttered 
or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's 
masterpiece — he painted it there the night that the last 
leaf fell." 




From a photograph laken by Alexander Hesler, Chicago 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
1809-1865 

We do not ordinarily think of Abraham Lincoln as a literary 
man, but as a wise statesman and leader, a clear thinker, and 
a forceful speaker. In the critical historical period through 
which he was called to lead our nation, however, the events 
all seemed to converge to a focus in the dramatic moment 
when he delivered the one supremely great literary utter- 
ance of his life, the celebrated "Address at the Dedication 
of the Gettysburg National Cemetery." 

The facts of Lincoln's life are well known. He was born 
near Hodgenville, Kentucky, February 12, 1809, moved 
with his parents into Indiana when he was seven years old, 
and on into Illinois just as he reached his twenty-first year. 
He had little or no school advantages, but by private study 
he succeeded in educating himself. Early in life he began 
to discipline himself to a strict habit of expressing his 
thought in the clearest and simplest language he could 
command, using always familiar and homely illustrations 
to make his meaning still clearer. He became a successful 
lawyer and an able debater. He was repeatedly sent to the 
Illinois House of Representatives, and finally he was elected 
to Congress. When he met Stephen A. Douglas, then a 
most powerful figure in national politics, in a joint debate 
in the national campaign for United States senator in 
1858, he overmatched this distinguished debater, though he 
failed to win from him his seat in the United States Senate. 
This campaign made Lincoln a powerful force in national 
politics, and in i860 he was nominated by the Republican 
party for the presidency. 

Every child knows of the terrible conflict which followed 
his inauguration in 1861, and every American now honors 
Abraham Lincoln along with Washington as one of the two 
greatest presidents our country has had. His tragic death 
at the hands of an assassin in Washington City, April 15, 
1865, plunged the whole country, North and South, into 
grief. No more unfortunate thing could have happened — 
especially to the South, facing as it did the trying period 
of reconstruction which was to follow — than to lose at this 
critical juncture the influence of the great-brained, justice- 
loving, tender-hearted Lincoln. 

I467] 



ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE 
GETTYSBURG NATIONAL CEMETERY 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
on this continent a new nation, conceived in hberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 5 
can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that 
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a 
final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that 
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
that we should do this. 10 

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot 
consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it 
far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will 
little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can is 
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, 
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It 
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- 
ing before us — that from these honored dead we take 21 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last 
full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation 
under God shall have a new birth of freedom; and that 
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall 25 
not perish from the earth. 



[468I 




SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS 
(Mark Twain) 



SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS— MARK TWAIN 

1835-1910 

Mark Twain is not merely our greatest humorist; he is 
also one of our greatest creative geniuses, and he is undoubt- 
edh' our one writer who is most thoroughly representative 
of the genuine American spirit and life. For a long time 
he was looked upon as a mere jester, and his works were 
not accepted as belonging at all to the best class of literature ; 
but from the first he was accepted at his real worth by a few 
discerning ones, and during the past two decades the critics 
and the public alike have come to realize that Mark Twain 
is one of the few creative giants that have sprung out of 
our democratic soil. He shares with Walt Whitman the 
distinction of coming up directly from the common demo- 
cratic masses, and with him, too, he shares the almost unani- 
mous approval and applause of European critics. 

Samuel Langhome Clemens, the son of John Clemens and 
Jane Lampton, both of unpretentious but sterling southern 
families, was born November 30, 1835, in the hamlet of 
Florida, Missouri, some fifty miles Vs^est of the Mississippi 
River. Four years later the family moved to Hannibal, 
a typical river town about a hundred miles north of 
St. Louis, and here grew up in all the freedom of that 
border life the boy who was to make the town famous 
by enshrining its life in those immortal books Tom Sawyer 
and Huckleberry Finn. It was almost impossible to 
keep Sam in the village school or to make him study his 
lessons, but the effort was kept up until he reached his 
twelfth year. He was then apprenticed to learn the printer's 
trade, a fortunate choice, since it brought him into contact 
with type and printer's ink and thus helped to complete 
the desultory education he had received in the village school. 
He worked for six years as a printer's devil on the local news- 
papers, and as one of his companions remarked, he was 
rightly named in this position. Then he took a sort of jour- 
neyman's trip to the East to complete his training as a 
printer. He remained for a year or more in Philadelphia 
and New York, but he was not satisfied to become a mere 

[469] 



470 American Literary Readings 

typesetting machine, and so he turned his face westward 
once more to seek fame and fortune in the land of his birth. 
For about two years he was Horace Bixby's cub, or assistant 
on a steamboat, learning the business of a pilot on the Miss- 
issippi River, and for about two years more he was himself a 
master pilot on that treacherous river. He was proud of his 
profession, and later in life he declared that he loved it far 
better than any other business he had tried. The Civil 
War brought to a close this period of his career, but we have 
a faithful portrayal of the vanished past of Mississippi 
pilotage in his reminiscent treatment in Lije on the Missis- 
sippi (1883). 

I His next experience carried him to the Far West. He 
joined a troop preparatory to enlisting in the Confederate 
Army, but a few weeks of camp life convinced him that 
soldiering wac not the sort of occupation that suited him. 
He was led by his southern ancestry and his environment (for 
he was reared in a slave-holding community) to espouse 
the southern cause, but deep down in his heart there was 
little enthusiasm for it. His eldest brother had just 
been appointed territorial secretary of Nevada, and young 
Clemens was offered the opportunity of going along as his 
assistant. So during the years from 1861 to 1867 he was 
again enlarging his education by looking on and taking part 
in those wild and stirring activities of the newly opened 
West. He soon felt the call of the gold and struck out 
for fortune in the mining districts. He did not succeed in 
finding inuch gold, though he came perilously near to it on 
several occasions, but he did succeed in storing his mind 
with all those wonderful experiences out of which he was to 
mint the golden romance of some of his later books, such as 
The Celebrated Jumping Frog (1867) and Roughing It (1872). 
Discouraged in his fruitless mining operations, young 
Clemens turned to his old occupation and became local 
reporter on the Enterprise, a rather distinctive paper pub- 
lished at Virginia City, a thriving mining town that had 
sprung up like magic around the great silver mines known 
as the Comstock lode. Many were the practical jokes and 
startling schemes indulged in by the lively group of news- 
paper men engaged on this paper, and the rampant imagi- 
nation of the young local reporter usually led in these esca- 
pades. Presently he was sent to Carson City to report the 
doings of the newly formed legislature, and as was expected 



Mark Twain 471 

of him, he sent back a series of exceedingly breezy letters. 
These were unsigned at first, but they were being widely 
copied, and he felt that he ought to choose a pen name so 
as to conserve and center his reputation around it. He hit 
upon the happy combination Mark Twain, an old river term 
meaning the mark registering two (twain) fathoms, or 
twelve feet, of water. He said it had a comforting sound, 
for whenever a pilot heard that reading called out, he knew 
that he was in a safe depth of water. His reputation was 
spreading rapidly now, and so the call to the wider world led 
him to San Francisco. It must be confessed, however, that 
the immediate cause of his leaving Carson City was to 
avoid prosecution for accepting a challenge to a duel which 
never came off, a story which he has recorded in full in 
Roughing It. At San Francisco he met Bret Harte and 
other men of local fame as journalists, poets, lecturers, and 
artists of one sort or another, and under the influence of 
this new environment his style developed rapidly from 
what he called an awkward and grotesque sort of natural 
utterance, into a more facile literary type of prose. 

His vigorous news letters which he still sent back to his old 
employers on the Virginia City Enterprise soon got him into 
trouble with the police of San Francisco, for he did not hesi- 
tate to attack some of their corrupt practices, and he was 
forced to leave the city for a while. With his pal, Jim 
Gillis, who was the original of Bret Harte's "Truthful 
James," he went to the mountains of east California and 
engaged in the fascinating game of pocket mining. The 
partners were just on the verge of uncovering a rich treasure 
of nuggets when they deserted their claim and allowed some 
more fortunate miners to come along and uncover a rich 
pocket just a few feet from where they stopped. But the 
real chance of Mark Twain's life came from this experience, 
for here he ran across the droll story of "The Celebrated 
Jtmiping Frog of Calaveras County." It was early in 1865 
tha^ he first heard the story, and by the end of this year, 
upon the publication of the story in the East, Mark Twain 
was well on his way to fame. 

After the publication of this early volume of sketches in 
1867, he continued his newspaper work in San Francisco, 
making one very successful trip to the Hawaiian Islands. 
He also won some fame as a lecturer at this time. But the 
first really great success came when he got a commission to 



472 American Literary Readings 

travel through Europe and the Holy Land with a group 
of Americans who were to make the voyage in the Quaker 
City. By skillful persuasions he convinced the editors of 
the Alta Calif ornian that he could send them a series of 
letters that would be worth the price of the trip, some- 
thing over $1200. He wrote fifty-odd letters of his experi- 
ences on this trip, and these were later collected in a book 
which took the public by storm — namely, The Innocents 
Abroad (1869). Other books of travel and impressions from 
abroad had been written by Irving, Longfellow, Hawthorne, 
and Bayard Taylor, but this was an entirely new type. 
It was extravagantly himiorous, boisterously funny, and yet 
filled with wonderful passages of description and comment 
on the really impressive scenes of the old world. The book 
was at bottom a severe satire on the sentimental and gushy 
type of description that was found in the guide books and 
travel letters of the day. Mark Twain went abroad with 
his eyes open, and he laughed to scorn those American 
innocents who were ever ready to gulp down with rolling 
eyes and ecstatic exclamations every fossilized legend that 
the sentimental guide books or the stereotyped talk of their 
paid guides gave them. The breezy, original, humorous, 
human, and frankly American revelations of this new writer 
who saw things with his own eyes and reported them as 
he saw them met with immediate and widespread approval. 
It was on this tour that Mark Twain met Charlie Langdon 
and saw for the first time the beautiful miniature of 
Langdon's sister Olivia, the woman who was to become 
his wife and the most profoundly formative influence on his 
character and on his later attitude toward his art. She 
was a wealthy girl, and it seemed almost unthinkable that 
an unknown westerner without money, formal culture, or 
social position should aspire to her hand. But by persist- 
ence and patience Mark Twain overcame all obstacles, and 
he was in every sense of the word happily mated with this 
charming woman. She called him always by the suggestive 
pet name of "Youth," and all through her life, by his own 
confession, she was his most helpful and sympathetic critic, 
and aided him to realize himself to the fullest extent in the 
more sericas and lasting products of his art. Upon their 
marriage in 1870, they went to Buffalo, where through the 
help of Mr, Langdon, Mark Twain had become part owner 
and associate editor of the Buffalo Express. But the 



Mark Twain 473 

venture was not a fortunate one ; sorrows due to death and 
sickness followed, and presently the young couple sold their 
property in Buffalo and retired to Elmira, New York, 
for the summer, and then moved to Hartford, Connecticut, 
where they made their home for a number of years. 

Alter giving up his journalistic position, Clemens arranged 
to go on the lecture platform to recoup his fortunes. He 
had succeeded from the very first as a lecturer in California, 
and had captivated audiences in the East and in the Middle 
West just after his return from his first trip abroad ; so he 
undertook his second tour with full confidence. He won his 
audiences by his slow, drawling speech and by his narrative 
and dramatic powers, as well as by his inimitable dry 
humor and flashes of pure wit. He was acclaimed the most 
popular lecturer and reader in America, but he never liked 
this work and resorted to the platform only when it was 
necessary to recover from some financial difficulty. 

Roughing It appeared in 1S72, and was almost or quite 
as popular as The Innocents Abroad had been. This new 
book was based on his experiences in the West, and to many 
readers it is more entertaining than The Innocents Abroad, 
mainly because it is more thoroughly American in subject- 
matter and treatment. To proteci; his rights of publication 
in this new volume, Mark Twain made a trip to England. 
He had some notion also of gathering material for a new 
book on the English people; but when he was treated so 
cordially and honored so signally by them, he confessed that 
he could not bring himself to dishonor their hospitality by 
exploiting them in a humorous book. 

On his return to America he collaborated with Charles 
Dudley Warner in the production of a novel called The 
Gilded Age. In this book Mr. Warner did the romance, 
and Mark Twain drew the characters, modeling them 
mostly from the members of his own family. The charac- 
ter of Colonel Mulberry Sellers, the dreamer and idealist, 
drawn from James Lampton, his maternal uncle, is one of 
the most magnetic and original of all Mark Twain's crea- 
tions. Colonel Sellers was later made the central figure in 
a successful play. 

After another trip to London in which he registered a 
signal triumph as a lecturer, Mark Twain began the com- 
position of a new book which was to surpass in popularity 
anything he had yet done. This was the wonderful story 



474 American Literary Readings 

of boy life on the Mississippi, based on his own experiences 
and those of several of his companions in the old days at 
Hannibal, Missouri. Other work interrupted him before he 
completed the task, however, and it was not until 1876 that 
Tom Sawyer made its appearance. This book, together with 
The Adventures of Hucklehcrry Finn (1884), with which it is 
usually bracketed, though the "two are entirely different types 
of stories, is undoubtedly the finest creative achievement of 
Mark Twain's genius. Tom is the typical American boy, 
bad and yet not too bad to be likable, rough and ready, 
shrewd, courageous, sincere, genuine. His story is so 
realistically told that many persons believe that the hero 
actually lived through the adventures described. Huckle- 
berry Finn is a poor outcast from the very lowest stratum 
of society, but with a tender heart and a pure soul wrapped 
in his unkempt and hardened little body. The book is one 
of the finest pieces of realism in modern literature. It gives 
us a faithful presentation of the mid-century life on the 
Mississippi, the scenes coming on in rapid succession like a 
vivid panorama moving before our very eyes. There is 
nothing final, nothing fortuitous, nothing romantic, but all 
appears to be just as it is in real life. This book, together 
with Tom Saivyer and Life on the Mississippi, gives us the 
truest historical values of the vanished life on the great inland 
waterway. Huckleberry Finn has been singled out not only 
as Mark Twain's masterpiece, but as one of the world's 
great books. 

Among his many other volumes, two or three at least 
must be mentioned. The romantic extravaganza A Con- 
necticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) is a humorous 
presentation of the new democratic ideals as opposed to 
the ancient aristocracies and monarchial forms of govern- 
ment. The Prince and the Pauper (1881), a delightful 
juvenile romance, had previously set forth something of 
the same teaching in the plot whereby a prince and a pauper 
are made to interchange places in order that each may see 
how the other half of the world lives. Together with 
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), a searching study of negro 
slavery punctuated with the keen and exhilarating epigrams 
or maxims of Mark Twain through the mouth of the title 
character, and Personal Recollections of foan of Arc (1896), 
a historical study cast in memoir form, a powerful piece of 
writing and the one of all his works that Mark Twain liked 



Mark Twain 475 

best, — these make up the more valuable of his later pro- 
ductions. In most of his other works, particularly in the 
field of literary criticism, he displays more courage than 
good judgment. 

The story of Mark Twain's debts is to be placed with Sir 
Walter Scott's very similar struggle as one of the two most 
inspiring examples of business integrity recorded in modern 
literary history. Being himself somewhat of a dreamer, he 
allowed many impractical enthusiasts to enlist his aid in their 
wild financial speculations, and he lost heavily in most of 
these investments. Finally he became involved in large 
losses through a publishing house with which he was con- 
nected as a partner. When an assignment was forced upon 
the firm, Mark Twain gave up all his own property, and his 
wife also generously put her patrimony in to satisfy the 
creditors; but there was still found to be owing a large sum. 
Through the bankruptcy laws he might have settled legally 
by simply giving up all the assets of the company, but he 
asked for time, saying that he would pay dollar for dollar 
if he lived to earn it. In his sixtieth year he set himself 
resolutely to the task of molding his talents into cash 
through his writings and his lectures. In 1895 he began 
the memorable lecture tour around the world, beginning in 
America and moving westward to Australia, New Zealand, 
India, Ce^don, and South Africa, landing finally in Vienna, 
Austria. This marv^elous lecture tour, perhaps the most 
marvelous on record, netted him a large sum; and with the 
additional income from his books, within two and a half 
years he had paid every dollar of the debts of his firm and 
was again a free man with untarnished business honor. 

From a humble beginning Mark Twain had reached a 
dizzy height in the affectionate regard of his own people and 
of the world. He was not spoiled by this adulation, how- 
ever, and he refused to compromise himself by exploiting 
his popularity or appearing before the public for personal 
gain. He gave himself freely for public good, but he had a 
competency for himself, and there was no longer need for 
him to pile up money. He was greater than kings and 
potentates, for he commanded the affectionate regard of 
millions of men through the magnetism, sincerity, and 
geniality of his own personality. Missouri, through the 
State University, honored her son with the degree of LL.D., 
and some years later even the conservative old-world 



476 American Literary Readings 

University of Oxford conferred upon him her coveted degree 
of Litt. D. He made other voyages abroad for his wife's 
and his own health, but the strong constitution was gradu- 
ally weakening. His wife died in 1903 in Florence, Italy, 
and the blow was a severe one to Mark Twain. He took 
up his residence in New York City with his one surviving 
daughter, and fought bravely but ineffectually against a 
growing sense of remorse, bitterness, and pessimism. On his 
seventieth birthday a great dinner was given in his honor in 
New York, and on this occasion he delivered perhaps the 
greatest of all his speeches. In his last years he retired to 
Stormfield, a beautiful home that had been built for him at 
Redding, Connecticut, and here he died, April 21, 19 10, in 
his seventy-fifth year. He was buried beside the bodies of 
his wife and three of his children in Elmira, New York. 

{Mark Twain, A Biography (19 12) by Albert Bigelow Paine is the 
authoritative life of this author. Mr. Paine's The Boy's Life of Mark 
Twain (191 6) is a briefer and simpler story based on the larger work.) 



THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG 
Of Calaveras County 

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who 
wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous 
old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, 
Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto 
append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas 5 
W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a 
personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old 
Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous 
Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly 
to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and 10 
tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, 
it certainly succeeded. 

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar- 
room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient 
mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and is 
bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness 
and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused 
up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had 
commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished 
companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley — 20 
Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley — a young minister of the Gospel, 
who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's 
Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing 
about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under 
many obligations to him. 25 

Simon Wheeler backed me into a comer and blockaded me 
there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the 
monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He 
never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice 
from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial 30 

[477] 



47 S American Literary Readings 

sentence, he never betrayed the sHghtest suspicion of enthu- 
siasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran 
a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed 
me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was 

35 any thing ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it 
as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as 
men of transcendent genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle 
of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn 
without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said 

40 before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas 
W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his 
own way, and never interrupted him once: 

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in 
the winter of '49 — or may be it was the spring of '50 — I don't 

45 recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think 
it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume 
wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any 
way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any 
thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body 

50 to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. 
Any way that suited the other man would suit him — any 
way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was 
lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. 
He was always ready and la3ang for a chance ; there could n't 

55 be no soli try thing mentioned but that feller 'd offer to bet 
on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. 
If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find 
him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet 
on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a 

60 chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds 
setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly 
first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there 
reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the 
best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. 

65 If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he 



The Celebrated Jumping Frog 479 

would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever 
he was going to, and if you took him up, he would f oiler that 
straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where 
he was boimd for and how long he was on the road. Lots 
of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about 70 
him. Why, it never made no difference to him — he would 
bet on any thing — the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's 
wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as 
if they war n't going to save her; but one morning he come in, 
and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was con- 75 
siderable better — thank the Lord for his inf 'nit mercy — and 
coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, 
she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, 
"•Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, any way." 

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare — the boys called her the so 
fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, 
because, of course, she was faster than that — and he used to 
win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always 
had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or 
something of that kind. They used to give her two or three ss 
hundred yards start, and then pass her under way; but 
always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and 
desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and 
scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and 
sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking 90 
up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing 
and sneezing and blowing her nose — and always fetch up at 
the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cipher 
it down. 

And he had a little small bull pup, that to look at him 95 
you'd think he wan't worth a cent, but to set around and 
look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as 
soon as money was up on him, he was a different dog; his un- 
derjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, 
and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the loo 
furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bully-rag him, 



4S0 American Literary Readings 

and bite him, and throw him over his shoulder two or three 
times, and Andrew Jackson — which was the name of the 
pup — Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was 

105 satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else — and the bets 
being doubled and doubled on the other side all the time, 
till the money was all up ; and then all of a sudden he would 
grab that other dog jest by the j'int of his hind leg and 
freeze to it — not chaw, you understand, but only jest grip 

no and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. 
Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed 
a dog once that did n't have no hind legs, because they'd 
been sawed off by a circular saw, and when the thing had 
gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he come 

115 to make a snatch for his pet holt, he saw in a minute how he'd 
been imposed on, and how the other dog had been in the 
door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he 
looked sorter discouraged-like, and did n't try no more to win 
the fight, and so he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley 

120 a look, as much as to say his heart was broke, and it was his 
fault, for putting up a dog than had n't no hind legs for him 
to take holt of, which, was his main dependence in a fight, 
and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died. It 
was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have 

125 made a name for hisself if he'd lived, for the stuff was in him, 
and he had genius — I know it, because he had n't had no 
opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to reason that 
a dog could make such a fight as he could under them 
circumstances, if he had n't no talent. It always makes 

130 me feel sorry when I think of that last fight of his'n, and the 
way it turned out. 

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken 
cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till you 
could n't rest, and you could n't fetch nothing for him to bet 

iss on but. he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and 
took him home, and said he cal'klated to edercate him; and 
so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back 



The Celebrated Jumping Frog 481 

yard and l6am that frog to jump. And you bet you he did 
learn him, too. He'd give him a Httle punch behind, and 
the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like ho 
a doughnut — see him turn one summerset, or may be a 
couple, if he got a good start, and come down fiat-footed and 
all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of 
catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that 
he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley 145 
said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most 
any thing — and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l 
Webster down here on this floor — Dan'l Webster was the 
name of the frog — and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and 
quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake 150 
a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again 
as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his 
head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea 
he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never 
see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he 155 
was so gifted. And when it Gome to fair and square jimiping 
on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one 
straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jump- 
ing on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; 
and when it come to that. Smiley would ante up money on leo 
him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud 
of that frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had 
traveled and been every wheres, all said he laid over any frog 
that ever they see. 

■ Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he les 
used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. 
One day a feller — a stranger in the camp, he was — come 
across him with his box, and says : 

"What might it be that 3^ou've got in the box?" 
And Smiley says, sorter indift'erent like, "It might bene 
a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it an't — 
it's only just a frog." 
And the feller took it and looked at it careful, and turned 



482 I American Literary Readings 

it round this way and that, and says, "H'm — so 'tis. Well, 

175 what's he good for? " 

"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough 
for one thing, I should judge — he can outjump ary frog in 
Calaveras county." 

The feller took the box again, and took another long, 

180 particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very 
deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog 
that's any better'n any other frog." 

"May be you don't," Smiley says. "May be you under- 
stand frogs, and may be you don't understand 'em; may be 

185 you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, 

as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk 

forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras 

county." 

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad 

190 like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; 
but if I had a frog, I'd bet you." 

And then Smiley says, "That's all right — that's all right — 
if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." 
And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars 

195 along with Smiley's, and set down to wait. 

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to 
hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth 
open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot — 
filled him pretty near up to his chin — and set him on the 

200 floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in 
the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and 
fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and says: 

"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with 
his forepaws just even with Dan'l, and I'll give the word." 

205 Then he says, " One — two — three — jiunp ! ' ' and him and the 
feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog 
hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his 
shoulders — so — like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use — he 
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he 



The Celebrated Jumping Frog 483 

couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley 210 
was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he 
didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course. 

The feller took the money and started away; and when 
he was going out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb 
over his shoulders — this way — at Dan'l, and says again, 215 
very deliberate, "Well, / don't see no p'ints about that frog 
that's any better'n any other frog." 

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at 
Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, "I do wonder what 
in the nation that frog throw'd off for — I wo^ider if there 220 
an't something the matter with him — he 'pears to look 
mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the 
nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame 
my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!" and turned him 
upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. 225 
And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man — 
he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he 
never ketched him. And — 

[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the 
front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And 230 
turning to me as he moved away, he said, "Just set where 
you are, stranger, and rest easy — I an't going to be gone a 
second." 

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of 
the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would 235 
be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. 
Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away. 

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he 
buttonholed me and recommenced: 

"Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that 240 
didn't have no tail, only jest a short stimip like a bannannef, 
and — " 

"Oh, hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered, 
good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, 
I departed, 245 



BRET HARTE 
1839-1902 

Francis Bret Harte was by birth and training an easterner, 
being born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1839; but he 
earned his reputation by writing poems and stories deaHng 
with the wild scenery, conglomerate life, and odd characters 
of the mining districts of California, and so he is always 
thought of as belonging to the western group of writers. 
He receivecj, a common-school education, but the principal 
source of his literary training was through his parents. His 
father, a professor of Greek in Albany College, was a lin- 
guist of considerable attainments, and his mother a cultured 
woman who directed her son's reading with such judicious 
care that by the time he was grown he was exceedingly 
well read. In 1854 he went to California and there tried to 
earn a living through several small clerical and teaching posi- 
tions. He finally entered a newspaper printing office as a 
compositor, and by dint of steady purpose and persistent 
effort at writing he rose to successful editorial positions, 
first on the Golden Era and then on the Calif ornian, a weekly 
paper to which he contributed his "Condensed Novels," 
being parodies on popular works of fiction of that time. 

The Overland Monthly was founded in 1868, with Bret 
Harte as its editor. The first number appeared without any 
matter of a distinctly local character, so for the second 
number the young editor supplied the deficiency himself 
by writing his first story of mining life, "The Luck of Roar- 
ing Camp . ' ' The proprietor of the magazine became dubious 
as to the wisdom of printing such a frank and novel presen- 
tation of a situation so unusual, characters so rough and 
uncouth, and life in such a questionable stratum of society. 
But when the editor-author of the story threatened to resign 
unless allowed to exercise his own judgment unhampered 
in selecting matter for the magazine, the proprietor yielded 
and the story appeared in its original form. It provoked a 
good deal of protest at home, being characterized as inde- 
cent, immodest, improper, and unfaithful in its portrayal 
of life in the West at its best; but it was warmly welcomed 
in the East as the work of an original writer of great promise. 

[484I 




FRANCIS BRET HARTE 



Bret Harte 485 

The editor of the Atlantic Monthly begged for a similar con- 
tribution, and a number of letters of commendation came 
to the author of this new type of story. "The Outcasts 
of Poker Flat," " Higgles, " and "Tennessee's Partner" 
followed, and presently Bret Harte had enough stories 
in this vein to make up a volume. These stories together 
with a catchy, humorous kind of dialect verse, of which 
"The Heathen Chinee" or "Plain Language from Truthful 
James," and "Jim" are typical, made Harte famous not 
only in America but in England as well. 

In 1870, being flattered by the applause of the East, Harte 
went to New York to engage in writing for the magazines. 
The Atlantic Monthly paid him the munificent sum of 
$10,000 for all his work for a year, and he was probably the 
best paid short-story writer in the countr}^ at that time. 
But in spite of his large earnings he became involved in 
debt. To escape from his difficulties he accepted an appoint- 
ment in the consular service and went to Germany and 
then to Glasgow, Scotland. Finally he settled in England, 
where he was even more popular than he was in America. 
He became estranged from his family and remained in 
England until his death in 1902. 

He wrote many stories and poems, imitative of his first 
successful work, but the promise of his early output was 
not realized in his later productions. He did not seem to 
love the country which he had so successfully exploited in 
his stories. He was not a great interpreter of the real 
American spirit, as was his early contemporary and col- 
league, Mark Twain, but he caught the spirit of the Cali- 
fornia mining camp in the gold-fever days as nobody else 
was able to do, and he has preserved for future generations 
this small but interesting and now completely vanished 
phase of American life. He was confessedly a lover and 
follower of Dickens, and like him did not hesitate to portray 
all sorts of low characters, rough miners, gamblers, adven- 
turers, desperadoes, and unchaste women, and in each of 
these he discovered that element of the human, that touch 
of nature, which after all makes the whole world kin. His 
range was narrow, but he did good work in the local short 
story, in which genre his influence has been by no means 
insignificant. 

(The rfullest life of Bret Harte is that by H. C. Merwin. The 
shorter study by H. W. Boynton is more judicious if less eulogistic.) 



TENNESSEE'S PARTNER 

I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our 
ignorance of it certainly never gave us any social incon- 
venience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854 most men were christened 
anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived from 
5 some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree 
Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in 
"Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of that 
chemical in his daily bread; or from some unlucky slip, as 
exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, 
10 who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispro- 
nunciation of the term '"iron pyrites." Perhaps this may 
have been the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am con-- 
strained to think that it was because a man's real name in 
that day rested solely upon his own unsupported statement. 

15 "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston, addressing a 
timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of such 
Cliffords!" He then introduced the unfortunate man, 
whose name happened to be really Clifford, as "Jaybird 
Charley," — an unhallowed inspiration of the moment that 

20 clung to him ever after. 

But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never 
knew by any other than this relative title. That he had 
ever existed as a separate and distinct individuality we only 
learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to 

25 go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He never 
got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was 
attracted by a young person who waited upon the table at 
the hotel where he took his meals. One morning he said 
something to her which caused her to smile not unkindly, 

30 to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his 

[486] 



Tennessee's Partner 487 

upturned, seriors, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. 
He followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered 
with more toast and victory. That day week they were 
married by a justice of the peace, and returned to Poker Flat. 
I am aware that something more might be made of this 35 
episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar 
— in the gulches and bar-rooms, — where all sentiment was 
modified by a strong sense of humor. 

Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps 
for the reason that Tennessee, then living with his partner, 40 
one day took occasion to say something to the bride on his 
own account, at which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly 
and chastely retreated, — this time as far as Mar^^sville, 
where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to 
housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. 45 
Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply and 
seriously, as was his fashion. But to everybody's surprise, 
when Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without 
his partner's wife, — she having smiled and retreated with 
somebody else, — Tennessee's Partner was the first man to so 
shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who 
had gathered in the caiion to see the shooting were naturally 
indignant. Their indignation might have found vent in 
sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's Partner's eye 
that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, 55 
he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical 
detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty. 

Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown 
up on the Bar. He was known to be a gambler; he was sus- 
pected to be a thief. In these suspicions Tennessee's Part- eo 
ner was equally compromised; his continued intimacy with 
Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be 
accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. 
At last Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he 
overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog. The stranger es 



488 American Literary Readings 

afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the time with 
interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically con- 
cluded the interview in the following words : ' ' And now, 
young man, I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, 

70 and your money. You see your weppings might get you 
into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation 
to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was 
San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may be stated 
here that Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no 

75 business preoccupation could wholly subdue. 

This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made 
common cause against the highwayman. Tennessee was 
hunted in very much the same fashion as his prototype, the 
grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he made a desper- 

80 ate dash through the Bar, emptying, his revolver at the 
crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canon; 
but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a small man 
on a gray horse. The men looked at each other a moment in 
silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and inde- 

85 pendent, and both types of a civilization that in the seven- 
teenth century would have been called heroic, but in the 
nineteenth simply "reckless." 

"What have you got there? — I call," said Tennessee 
quietly. 

90 "Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger as quietly, 
showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. 

"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and, with this 
gambler's epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and rode 
back with his captor. 

95 It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually 
sprang up with the going down of the sun behind the chap- 
arral-crested mountain was that evening withheld from 
Sandy Bar. The little canon was stifling with heated resi- 
nous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the bar sent 

100 forth faint sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day 



Tennessee's Partner 489 

and its fierce passions still filled the camp. Lights moved 
restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering 
reflection from its tawny current. • Against the blackness of 
the pines the windows of the old loft above the express office 
stood out staringly bright ; and through their curtainless 105 
panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who 
were even then deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above 
all this, etched on the dark firmament, rose the Sierra, 
remote and passionless, crowned with remoter passionless stars. 

The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was con- no 
sistent with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some 
extent obliged to justify, in their verdict, the previous 
irregularities of arrest and indictment. The law of Sandy 
Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and 
personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe 115 
in their hands, they were ready to listen patiently to any 
defense, which they were already satisfied was insufficient. 
There being no doubt in their own minds, they were willing 
to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist. 
Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be -hanged on 120 
general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of 
defense than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The 
Judge appeared to be more anxious than the prisoner, who, 
otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a grim pleasure in 
the responsibility he had created. "I don't take any hand 125 
in this yer game," had been his invariable but good-humored 
reply to all questions. The Judge — who was also his captor 
— for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not shot 
him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this 
human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind. Never- istf 
theless when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that 
Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he 
was admitted at once without question. Perhaps the 
younger members of the jury, to whom the proceedings were 
becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a relief. 135 



49° American Literary Readings 

For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and 
stout, with a square face, sunburned into a preternatural 
redness, clad in a loose duck " jiimper" and trousers streaked 
and splashed with red soil, his aspect under any circum- 

140 stances would have been quaint, and was now even ridicu- 
lous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag 
he was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed 
legends and inscriptions, that the material with which his 
trousers had been patched had been originally intended for 

145 a less ambitious covering. Yet he advanced with great 
gravity, and after shaking the hand of each person in the 
room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed 
face on a red bandana handkerchief, a shade lighter than 
his complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to 

150 steady himself, and thus addressed the Judge : — 

"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I 
thought I'd just step in and see how things was gittin' on 
with Tennessee thar, — my pardner. It's a hot night. I 
disremember any sich weather before on the Bar." 

155 He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other 
meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his 
pocket-handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his 
face diligently. 

"Have you anything to say on behalf of the prisoner?" 

160 said the Judge finally. 

"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. 
"I come yar as Tennessee's pardner, — • knowing him nigh on 
four year, off and on, wet and dry, in luck and out o' luck. 
His ways ain't aller my ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in 

165 that young man, thar ain't any liveliness as he's been up 
to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez you, — confi- 
dential-like, and between man and man, — sez you, 'do you 
know anything in his behalf? ' and I sez to you, sez I, — confi- 
dential-like, as between man and man, — 'what should a 

170 man know of his pardner?' " 



Tennessee's Partner 491 

"Is this all you have to say?" asked the judge impa- 
tiently, feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of 
humor was beginning to humanize the court. 

"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't 
for me to say anything agin' him. And now, what 's the 175 
case? Here's Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and 
doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner. Well, what does 
Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that 
stranger; and you lays for him, and you fetches him; and the 
honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a fa'r-minded iso 
man, and to you, gentlemen all, as fa'r-minded men, ef this 
is n't S3." 

"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any 
question to ask this man?" 

"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner hastily. "Iiss 
play this yer hand alone. To come down to the bed-rock, 
it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty rough 
and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer camp. 
And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more, 
some would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in 190 
coarse gold and a watch, — it's about all my pile, — and call 
it square!" And before a hand could be raised to prevent 
him, he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon the 
table. 

For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men 195 
sprang to their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, . 
and a suggestion to "throw him from the window" was only 
overridden by a gesture from the Judge. Tennessee laughed. 
And apparently oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's 
Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again 200 
with his handkerchief. 

When order was restored, and the man was made to 
understand, by the use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that 
Tennessee's offense could not be condoned by money, his 
face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and those who 205 



492 American Literary Readings 

were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled 
slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly- 
returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet 
entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed 

210 the tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had 
not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and 
saying, "This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without 
my pardner," he bowed to the jury and was about to with- 
draw, when the Judge called him back : — 

215 "If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better 
say it now." 

For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner 
and his strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed 
his white teeth, and saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out 

220 his hand. Tennessee's Partner took it in his own, and say- 
ing, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to see how things 
was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and adding that 
"it was a warm night," again mopped his face with his 
handkerchief, and without another word Avithdrew. 

225 The two men never again met each other alive. For the 
unparalleled insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch — y^'-ho, 
whether bigoted, weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible 
— firmly fixed in the mind of that mythical personage any 
wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and at the 

230 break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it 

• at the top of Marley's Hill. 

How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say 
anything, how perfect were the arrangements of the com- 
mittee, were all duly reported, with the addition of a warning 

235 moral and example to all future evil-doers, in the "Red 
Dog Clarion," by its editor, who was present, and to whose 
vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the 
beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of 
earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods 

240 and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and 



Tennessee's Partner 493 

above all, the infinite serenity that thrilled through each, 
was not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson. 
And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a 
life, with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed 
out of the misshapen thing that dangled between earth and 245 
sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as 
cheerily as before; and possibly the "Red Dog Clarion" was 
right. 

Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded 
the ominous tree. But as they turned to disperse, attention 250 
was drawn to the singular appearance of a motionless don- 
key-cart halted at the side of the road. As they approached, 
they at once recognized the venerable "Jenny" and the 
two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner, 
used by him in carrying dirt from his claim ; and a few paces 255 
distant the owner of the equipage himself, sitting under a 
buckeye-tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing face. 
In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body 
of the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the committee." 
He didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait." 250 
He was not working that day ; and when the gentlemen were 
done with the "diseased," he would take him. "Ef thar is 
any present," he added, in his simple, serious way, "as would 
care to jine in the fun'l, they kin come." Perhaps it was 
from a sense of humor, which I have already intimated was a 265 
feature of vSandy Bar, — perhaps it was from something eVen 
better than that, but two thirds of the loungers accepted the 
invitation at once. 

It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into 
the hands of his partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal 270 
tree, we noticed that it contained a rough oblong box, — 
apparently made from a section of sluicing, — and half filled 
with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was further 
decorated with slips of willow and made fragrant with buck- 
eye-blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, 275 



494 American Literary Readings , 

Tennessee's Partner drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, 
and gravely jnounting the narrow seat in front, with his feet 
upon the shafts, urged the httle donkey forward. The 
equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was 
280 habitual with Jenny even under less solemn circumstances. 
The men — half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-htunor- 
edly- — strolled along beside the cart, some in advance, 
some a little in the rear of the homely catafalque. But 
whether from the narrowing of the road or some present 
285 sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to 
the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise asstuning 
the external show of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, 
who had at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show 
upon an imaginary trombone, desisted from a lack of sym- 
290 pathy and appreciation, — not having, perhaps, your true 
humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his 
own fun. 

The way led through Grizzly Canon, by this time clothed 
in funereal drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying 
295 their moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along 
the track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending 
boughs upon the passing bier. A hare, surprised into help- 
less inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the 
roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain 
300 a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the blue-jays, 
spreading their wings, fluttered before them like outriders, 
until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were reached, and the soli- 
tary cabin of Tennessee's Partner. 

Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not 
305 have been a cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the 
rude and unlovely outlines, the unsavory details, which 
distinguished the nest-building of the California miner, were 
all here with the dreariness of decay superadded. A few 
paces from the cabin there was a rough inclosure, which, in 
310 the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity, 



Tennessee's Partner 495 

had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with 
fern. As we approached it, we were surprised to find that 
what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was 
the broken soil about an open grave. 

The cart was halted before the inclosure, and rejecting 315 
the offers of assistance with the same air of simple self-reli- 
ance he had displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted 
the rough coffin on his back, and deposited it unaided within 
the shallow grave. He then nailed down the board which 
served as a lid, and mounting the little mound of earth 320 
beside it, took off his hat and slowly mopped his face with 
his handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to 
speech, and they disposed themselves variously on the 
stimips and boulders, and sat expectant. 

"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner slowly, "has 325 
been running free all day, what's the natural thing for him 
to do? Why, to come home. And if he ain't in a condition 
to go home, what can his best friend do? Why, bring him 
home. And here's Tennessee has been running free, and 
we brings him home from his wandering." He paused and 330 
picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his 
sleeve, and went on: "It ain't the first time that I've 
packed him on my back, as you seed me now. It ain't the 
first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he 
couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and Jinny 335 
have waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so 
fetched him home, when he couldn't speak and didn't know 
me. And now that it 's the last time, why " — he paused and 
rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve — "you see it's sort 
of rough on his pardner. And now, gentleman," he added 340 
abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the fun'l's 
over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for 
your trouble." 

Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the 
grave, turning his back upon the crowd, that after a few 345 



496 American Literary Readings 

moments' hesitation gradually withdrew. As they crossed 
the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking 
back, thought they could see Tennessee's Partner, his work 
done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his knees, 

350 and his face buried in his red bandana handkerchief. But 
it was argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from 
his handkerchief at that distance, and this point remained 
undecided. 

In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of 

355 that day, Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret 
investigation had cleared him of any complicity in Tennes- 
see's guilt, and left only a suspicion of his general sanity. 
Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and proffering 
various uncouth but well-meant kindnesses. But from that 

360 day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to 
decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny 
grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound 
above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed. 

One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying 

365 in the storm and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, 
and the roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, 
Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, 
"It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put Jinny in the 
cart" ; and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint 

370 of his attendant.- Struggling, he still pursued his singular 
fancy: "There, now, steady. Jinny, — steady, old girl. 
How dark it is! Look out for the ruts, — and look out for 
him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind 
drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight 

375 up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar! I told you so! 
— thar he is, — coming this way, too, — all by himself, 
sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!" 
And so they met. 



Grizzly 497 

GRIZZLY 

Coward, — of heroic size, 
In whose lazy muscles lies 
Strength we fear and yet despise; 
Savage,— whose relentless tusks 
Are content with acorn husks; 
Robber, — whose exploits ne'er soared 
O'er the bee's or squirrel's hoard ; 
Whiskered chin, and feeble nose, 
Claws of steel on baby toes, — 
Here, in solitude and shade, 
Shambling, shuffling, plantigrade, 
Be thy courses undismayed ! 

Here, where nature makes thy bed, 
Let thy rude, half -human tread 

Point to hidden Indian springs. 
Lost in ferns and fragrant grasses, 

Hovered o'er by timid wings. 
Where the wood-duck lightly passes. 
Where the wild bee holds her sweets, — 
Epicurean retreats. 

Fit for thee, and better than i 

Fearful spoils of dangerous man. 

In th}' fat-jowled deviltry 

Friar Tuck shall live in thee; 

Thou may'st levy tithe and' dole; 2 

Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer. 
From the pilgrim taking toll ; 

Match thy cunning with his fear; 
Eat, and drink, and have thy fill; 
Yet remain an outlaw still ! a 




JOAQUIN MILLER 
At Home, 1900 



JOAQUIN MILLER 
1842-1913 

Cincinnatus Heine Miller, better known by his pen-name 
Joaquin Miller, was born on November 10, 1842, some- 
where on the border line between Ohio and Indiana. He 
tells us in the autobiographical sketch prefixed to his com- 
plete works that his cradle was a covered wagon, one of 
those "prairie schooners" in which his pioneer parents 
were making their long journey westward. They settled 
for a while in Indiana but finally decided to push on to 
Oregon, a distance of over three thousand miles, where 
they made their permanent home. Joaquin had his full 
share of the hardships and adventurous experiences that 
naturally fell to this pioneer family. Once he was painfully 
wounded in a fight with some unfriendly Indians; an arrow 
pierced his face and neck and almost caused his death. 
But during these years he learned to love the wild western 
life and the picturesque and beautiful things of this wonder 
world of nature with a passion which made him unques- 
tionably the poet laureate of the Far West, or as he was 
frequently called, "The Poet of the Sierras." 

As a young adventurer he went from Oregon to Cali- 
fornia and took passage for Boston, but he stopped off at 
Nicaragua on his voyage down the Pacific and joined 
General Walker in his romantic revolutionary expedition 
into that country. His Central American experiences 
later found expression in the long poem "Walker in Nicara- 
gua." Then he drifted back to the coast of Oregon, spent 
a short time at college, and became a teacher. He studied 
law, was admitted to the bar, and was for a short time a 
district judge. He had been writing a great deal of prose 
and verse during these later years, but his productions met 
with little favor. The lure of the mountains was ever 
calling him away from his social and legal duties, and 
when gold was discovered in Idaho and Montana, he left 
all and joined the stream of miners which flowed into those 
states. He accumulated enough of the precious metal to 
build a home for his parents and purchase a newspaper for 

[499] 



500 American Literary Readings 

himself. At the opening of the Civil War he threw his 
influence toward the peace party, and as a result of his 
vigorous editorials his paper was suppressed. Again he 
retired to the mountains to live alone with nature and to 
write poetry. 

About 1870 he crossed the continent and took passage 
from New York to England. He felt that he could never 
find an audience in his own country, for he had already pub- 
lished several thin volumes which had attracted little or 
no attention either in the West, where they were printed, 
or in the East, where he hoped to find recognition. In 
•London he lived a secluded life until he published at his 
own expense a volume of poems containing among other 
things an earlier poem on Joaquin Murietta, a Mexican 
bandit, from which fact he was himself called Joaquin in 
derision, a name which he permanently asstimed as his 
nom de plume in his next volume. The seven poems in his 
first voliune caught the English ear by their novelty and 
vigor and unmistakable evidences of poetical genius. The 
metrical crudeness and lack of literary finish were every- 
where recognized, but the English press praised his work 
extravagantly, and he was enabled to bring out his first 
really important voliime, Songs of the Sierras, in 187 1. His 
own picturesque personality in his western garb, the rich 
new experiences heralded from an unknown world, and the 
varied and beautiful scenery of the great Rocky Mountains 
which formed the staple of his poetry made him for a time 
a sort of literary lion in London. He was invited to dine 
with many notable persons, met such men as Dickens, 
Browning, Archbishop Trench, Moore, Rossetti, and was 
cordially received in clubs and private families. 

In spite of his success in London, little attention was paid 
to him in America, for in his uncouth western garb he was 
looked upon as an unfair representative of American culture 
and art. He had to wait long and patiently for an apprecia- 
tive hearing in his own country. For a time he lived in 
Washington City, building for himself a log cabin on Stony 
Creek, a few miles north of the city. This cabin is still an 
object of interest to the thousands of people who drive in 
the beautiful park which has since been laid out here. He 
finally purchased a mountain side of his own in Oakland, 
California, in sight of San Francisco, and built for himself 
the lodge in which he lived until his death in 19 13. 



Joaquin Miller 501 

Joaquin Miller caught the spirit of the western mountain 
scenery as none who had not lived in it could do. He is no 
imitator of the European bards, but an original American 
poet who was willing to put down in his own way what his 
own eyes saw and his own heart felt. He had his limitations 
and his faults, but he has earned a secure place among the 
poets who are thoroughly American in spirit and in subject- 
matter. 



KIT CARSON'S RIDE 

Room! room to turn round in, to breathe and he free. 
To grow to he giant, to sail as at sea 
With the speed of the wind on a steed with his mane 
To the wind, without pathway or route or a rein. 

6 Room! room to he free where the white bordered sea 
Blows a kiss to a brother as boundless as he; 
Where the buffalo come liJse a cloud on the plain, 
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main, 
And the lodge of the hunter to friend or to foe 

\o Offers rest; and unquestioned you come or you go. 
My plains of America! Seas of wild lands! 
From a land in the seas in a raiment of foam, 
That has reached to a stranger the welcome of home, 
I turn to you, lean to you, lift you my hands. 



IS "Run? Run? See this flank, sir, and I do love him so! 
But he's blind, badger blind. Whoa, Pache, boy, whoa. 
No, you would n't believe it to look at his eyes, 
But he's blind, badger blind, and it happen'd this wise: 



"We lay in the grass and the sunburnt clover 
20 That spread on the ground like a great brown cover 
Northward and southward, and west and away 
To the Brazos, where ova: lodges lay, 
One broad and unbroken level of brown. 
We were waiting the curtains of night to come down 
25 To cover us trio and conceal our flight 
With my brown bride, won from an Indian town 
That lay in the rear the full ride of a night. 

[502] 



Kit Carson's Ride 503 

"We lounged in the grass — her eyes were in mine, 
And her hands on my knee, and her hair was as wine 
In its wealth and its flood, poiiring on and all over 
Her bosom wine red, and press 'd never by one. 
Her touch was as warm as the tinge of the clover 
Burnt brown as it reach 'd to the kiss of the sun. 
Her words they were low as the lute-throated dove, 
And as laden with love as the heart when it beats 
In its hot, eager answer to earliest love, 
Oi* the bee hiuried home by its burthen of sweets. 



"We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels, 
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride; 
'Forty full miles if a foot to ride! 
Forty full miles if a foot, and the devils 
Of red Comanches are hot on the track 
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down 
Soon, very soon,' muttered bearded old Revels 
As he peer'd at the sun, lying low on his back, 
Holding fast to his lasso. Then he jerk'd at his steed 
And he sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around, 
And then dropp'd, as if shot, with an ear to the ground; 
Then again to his feet, and to me, to my bride. 
While his eyes were like flame, his face like a shroud, 
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud. 
And his voice loud and shrill, as both trumpet and reed,- 
'Pull, pull in yotu- lassoes, and bridle to steed. 
And speed you if ever for life you would speed. 
Aye, ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride! 
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire. 
And the feet of wild horses hard flying before 
I heard like a sea breaking high on the shore. 
While the buffalo come like a siu-ge of the sea. 
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three 
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.' 



504 American Literary Readings 

"We drew in the lassoes, seized saddle and rein, 
Threw them on, cinched them on, cinched them over again, 
And again drew the girth ; and spring we to horse, 

65 With head to the Brazos, with a sound in the air 
Like the surge of a sea, with a flash in the eye, 
From that red wall of flame reaching up to the sky; 
A red wall of flame and a black rolling sea 
Rushing fast upon us, as the wind sweeping free 

70 And afar from the desert blown hollow and hoarse. 



"Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall, 
We broke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer, 
There was work to be done, there was death in the air. 
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all. 



75 Twenty miles! . . . thirty miles! ... a dim distant 
speck . . . 
Then a long reaching line, and the Brazos in sight ! 
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight. 
I stood in my stirrup, and look'd to my right — 
But Revels was gone ; I glanced by my shoulder 

80 And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping 
Hard down on his breast, and his naked breast stooping 
Low down to the mane, as so swifter and bolder 
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire. 
He rode neck to neck with a buffalo bull, 

85 That made the earth shake where he came in his course. 
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full • 
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire 
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings hoarse. 
His keen, crooked horns, through the storm of his mane, 

90 Like black lances lifted and lifted again; 
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through. 
And Revels was gone, as we rode two and two. 



Columbus 505 

"I look'd to my left then — and nose, neck, and shoulder 
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs. 
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair 
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes. 
With a longing and love yet a look of despair 
And of pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her. 
And flames leaping far for her glorious hair. 
Her sinking horse f alter 'd, plunged, fell and was gone 
As I reach'd through the flame and I bore her still on. 
On! into the Brazos, she, Pache and I — 
Poor, burnt, blinded Pache. I love him . . . That's why." 

COLUMBUS 

Behind him lay the gray Azores, 

Behind the Gates of Hercules; 
Before him not the ghost of shores; 

Before him only shoreless seas. 
The good mate said: " Now must we pray. 

For lo! the very stars are gone. 
Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?" 

"Why, say : ' Sail on ! sail on ! and on ! ' " 

"My men grow mutinous day by day; 

My men grow ghastly, wan and weak." 
The stout mate thought of home ; a spray 

Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
"What shall I say, brave Adm'r'l, say. 

If we sight naught but seas at dawn?" 
"Why, you shall say at break of day: 

'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!'" 

They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 

Until at last the blanched mate said : 
"Why, now not even God would know 

Should I and all my men fall dead. 



5o6 American Literary Readings 

These very winds forget their way, 
For God from these dread seas is gone. 

Now speak, brave Adm'r'l, speak and say — " 
He said: "Sail on! sail on! and on!" 

They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate: 

"This mad sea shows his teeth tonight. 
He curls his lip, he lies in wait. 

He lifts his teeth, as if to bite ! 
Brave Adm'r'l, say but one good word: 

What shall we do when hope is gone?" 
The words leapt like a leaping sword : 

"Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!" 

Then pale and worn, he paced his deck, 

And peered through darkness. Ah, that night 

Of all dark nights ! And then a speck — 
Alight! Alight! At last a light ! 

It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! 

It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. 

He gained a world; he gave that world 
1 Its grandest lesson: "On! sail on!" 




From a photograph taken by Max Platz. Chicago 
EUGENE FIELD 



EUGENE FIELD 

1850-1895 

Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri, September 3 , 
1850, and died in Chicago, November 4, 1895, having barely- 
completed his forty-fifth year. He was taken to New 
England for his early education, and he finished what 
• academic training he had at the University of Missouri. 
He did not complete his course, however, preferring to 
sacrifice his degree in order to make a six months' tour 
of Europe. At twenty-three he began his journalistic 
career as a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal, and 
after working on a number of papers he rose to a perma- 
nent position on the Chicago Daily News, in which paper 
for the last twelve years of his life he conducted a unique 
column called "Sharps and Flats." This was a series of 
miscellanies in prose and poetry, covering a wide range of 
interests, by turns humorous, farcical, grotesque, pathetic, 
and serious. The material in the "Sharps and Flats" 
column was largely local in appeal, and in spite of its 
cleverness has now naturally lost much of its force, v 

In 1890 appeared two thin volumes of Field's productions 
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales and A Little Book of 
Western Verse. From this time on his popularity steadily 
grew, although he lived to enjoy only five years of the vogue 
created by the publication of these books. Two other 
volumes. With Trumpet and Drum and Love Songs of Child- 
hood, containing old and new poems, appeared just before 
his death. 

Eugene Field was possessed of a lovable personality. He 
was devoted to children of all classes and was an idealist 
in his home, where he had a devoted wife and eight children 
of his own. He was extremely sympathetic toward animal 
life, companionable and magnetic among all classes of people, 
full of sentiment and imaginative idealism, and yet, like 
many another genius, he was erratic, extravagant, uncon- 
ventional in his habits, and obsessed with his own peculiar 
fads and fancies. His best work was his inimitable child 

[507] 



5o8 American Literary Readings 

verse. He has been called "one of the sweetest singers in 
American literature and incomparably the noblest bard of 
childhood." His delicate sentiment, imaginative quality, 
and unconscious sincerity lift his child verse into the realm 
of art, and he is thus assured a unique niche in the Ameri- 
can temple of poetic fame. His best known child pieces are 
"A Dutch Lullaby (Wynken, Blynken, and Nod)," "Little 
Boy Blue," "Jest 'Fore Christmas," and "Seein' Things 
at Night." His two most significant moods — the imagi- 
natively sentimental and the pathetic — may be illustrated 
in the "Dutch Lullaby" and "Little Boy Blue." "In the 
Firelight" is an example of childhood experience glorified 
through reminiscence into a noble expression of faith. 



IN THE FIRELIGHT 

The fire upon the hearth is low, 
And there is stillness everywhere, 

While like winged spirits, here and there, 

The firelight shadows fluttering go. 

And as the shadows round me creep, 
A childish treble breaks the gloom. 
And softly from a further room 

Comes, "Now I lay me down to sleep." 

And somehow, with that little prayer 
And that sweet treble in my ears, 
My thoughts go back to distant years 

And linger with a loved one there ; 

And as I hear my child's amen, 

My mother's faith comes back to me, — 
Crouched at her side I seem to be, 

And Mother holds my hands again. 

Oh, for an hour in that dear place ! 

Oh, for the peace of that dear time! 

Oh, for that childish trust sublime! 
Oh, for a glimpse of Mother's face! 
Yet, as the shadows round me creep, 

I do not seem to be alone, — 

Sweet magic of that treble tone. 
And "Now I lay me down to sleep." 



[509] 



5IO American Literary Readings 

DUTCH LULLABY 

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night 

Sailed off in a wooden shoe, — 
Sailed on a river of misty light 

Into a sea of dew. 
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?' 

The old moon asked the three. 
"We have come to fish for the herring-fish 
That live in this beautiful sea; 
Nets of silver and gold have we," 
Said Wynken 
Blynken, 
And Nod. ~ 



The old moon laughed and sung a song. 

As they rocked in the wooden shoe; 
And the wind that sped them all night long 

Ruffled the waves of dew; 
The little stars were the herring-fish 

That lived in the beautiful sea. 
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish. 
But never afeard are we!" 
So cried the stars to the fishermen three, 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod. 



All night long their nets they threw 

For the fish in the twinkling foam. 
Then down from the sky came the wooden shoe, 

Bringing the fishermen home; 
'T was all so pretty a sail, it seemed 

As if it could not be ; 
And some folk thought 't was a dream they'd dreamed 



Dutch Lullaby 511 



Of sailing that beautiful sea; 

But I shall name you the fishermen three: 

Wynken, 

Blynken, 

And Nod. 



Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes, 

And Nod is a little head, 
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies 

Is a wee one's trundle-bed; 
So shut your eyes while Mother sings 

Of wonderful sights that be, 
And you shall see the beautiful things 
As you rock on the misty sea 
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,- 
Wynken, 
Blynken, 
And Nod. 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 
1849-1916 

If poetic merit should be judged merely by popularity 
with the reading public and with lecture audiences, James 
Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, would undoubtedly out- 
rank all other American poets with the single possible excep- 
tion of Longfellow. He was bom in the village of Greenfield, 
Indiana, October 7, 1849 (other dates from 185 1 to 1853 
frequently given are now held to be incorrect), and lived 
all his life in his native state, his residence being during his 
late years on the retired little Lockerbie Street in Indian- 
apolis. As a youth he is described as a delicate and slender 
lad with corn-silk hair, wide blue eyes, large nose, and 
freckled face. But he was not, as one might suppose 
from this description and from reading many of his later 
dialect poems, a backwoods, poverty-stricken country 
boy. On the contrary, he was the son of a well-to-do 
la\vyer in a moderately sized middle Indiana town of the 
mid-nineteenth century. He did not take full advantage 
of his school opportunities, however, preferring to spend his 
time loitering around the country, filling his mind with the 
images and experiences which he was later to enshrine so 
sympathetically and truly in his reminiscent verse. 

His tendency toward artistic expression early manifested 
itself in his ability to play by ear on several musical instru- 
ments and in his talent for drawing. At sixteen he learned 
the house- and sign-painting trade and went about the 
country for two years with several companions, practicing 
his vocation. Then he was induced to try reading law in his 
father's office for a time, but when, as he declares, he found 
out that political economy and law did not rime, he "slipped 
out of the office one summer afternoon when all outdoors 
was calling imperiously, shook the last dusty premise from 
my head, and was away." He found an opening more to 
his taste at that period of his life with a traveling medicine 
man. His duties were to paint or draw the advertisements, 
assist the troup of actors, remodel their songs and scenes, and 
perhaps take part in the acting and mimicry himself, for 
which, by the way, he had a decided talent. 

He was continually trying himself out in original poems 

[512] 



James Whttcomb Riley 513 

which he sent to local newspapers. Once he published 
"Leonainie," a poem which he pretended was signed by 
E. A. P. on the flyleaf of an old volume owned by Edgar 
Allan Poe. So successful was the hoax that it attracted 
nation-wide comment, many critics accepting the verses 
as a genuine work of Poe's. A storm of indignant protest 
arose when the trick was discovered, and Riley says that 
as a result he lost his position on the Anderson Democrat, a 
local paper on which he was working at the time. He was 
immediately called to join the stafE of the Indianapolis' 
Journal, however, and it was in this paper that he first 
began the long series of dialect poems purporting to come 
from a simple and unsophisticated farmer, Benj. F. Johnson, 
of Boone, the original Hoosier poet. Riley prepared long 
illiterate letters explaining how he, Johnson, came to write 
these poems, and how the tears rolled down his cheeks some- 
times as he wrote. "The Old Swimmin' Hole" was the first 
of the series published in the Journal in 1882, and in 1883 
appeared Riley's first volume, The Old Swimmin' Hole and 
'Leven More Poems. 

Through a long series of years there continued to flow 
from his pen poem after poem until he became one of our 
most voluminous writers. The public bought his books by 
the hundreds of thousands and still clamored for more. He 
was called before the public to give readings, and he later 
became one of the most popular entertainers, vying for public 
favor with Bill Nye, Mark Twain, Robert J. Burdette, 
Eugene Field, and George W. Cable, with each of whom 
he held joint readings. 

It was a long time before Riley was recognized by the 
older and more cultured eastern poets and critics, but he 
finally won praise from practically all of them. Longfellow 
wrote him an encouraging letter early in his career; Lowell 
introduced him to a New York City audience, as a true 
poet; Holmes, Howells, Mark Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, 
Rudyard Kipling, and scores of others gave him high praise 
for touching the hearts of the people with his homely dialect 
pieces, his child poems, and his more serious and elevated 
lyrics. He was honored with degrees by several of our 
leading universities, and on October 7, 191 1, the school 
children of Indiana, and of the whole country in 191 2, 
celebrated Riley's birthday with appropriate exercises. 
He died July 22, 1916. 



AFTERWHILES 

Where are they — the Afterwhiles — 
Luring us the lengthening miles 
Of our lives? Where is the dawn 
With the dew across the lawn 
Stroked with eager feet the far 
Way the hills and valleys are? 
Where the sun that smites the frown 
Of the eastward-gazer down? 
Where the rifted wreaths of mist 
O'er us, tinged with amethyst, 
Round the mountain's steep defiles? 
Where are all the afterwhiles? 

Afterwhile — and we will go 
Thither, yon, and to and fro — 
From the stifling city streets 
To the country's cool retreats — 
From the riot to the rest 
Where hearts beat the placidest ; 
Afterwhile, and we will fall 
Under breezy trees, and loll 
In the shade, with thirsty sight 
Drinking deep the blue delight 
Of the skies that will beguile 
Us as children — afterwhile. 

Afterwhile — and one intends 
To be gentler to his friends— 
To walk with them, in the hush 
Of still evenings, o'er the plush 
Of home-leading fields, and stand 

[514] 



Afterwhiles 515 

Long at parting, hand in hand: 
One, in time, will joy to take 
New resolves for someone's sake. 
And wear then the look that lies 
Clear and pure in other eyes — 
He will soothe and reconcile 
His own conscience — afterwhile. 

Afterwhile — we have in view • 
A far scene to journey to, — 
Where the old home is, and where 
The old mother waits us there. 
Peering, as the time grows late, 
Down the old path to the gate. — 
How we '11 click the latch that locks 
In the pinks and hollyhocks. 
And leap up the path once more 
Where she waits us at the door! — 
How we'll greet the dear old smile. 
And the warm tears — afterwhile! 

Ah, the endless afterwhiles! — 
Leagues on leagues, and miles on miles, 
In the distance far withdrawn. 
Stretching on, and on, and on. 
Till the fancy is footsore 
And faints in the dust before 
The last milestone's granite face. 
Hacked with : Here Beginneth Space. 
O far glimmering worlds and wings, 
Mystic smiles and beckonings. 
Lead us through the shadowy aisles, 
Out into the afterwhiles. 

Prom the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb 
Riley. Copyright 1913. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs- 
Merrill Company. 



5i6 American Literary Readings 

THE RAGGEDY MAN 

O The Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa; 
An' he's the goodest man ever you saw! 
He comes to our house every day, 
An' waters the horses, an' feeds 'em hay; 
An' he opens the shed — an' we all ist laugh 
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf; 
An' nen — ef o\xr hired girl says he can — 
He milks the cow fer 'Lizabuth Ann. — 
Ain't he a' awful good Raggedy Man? 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

W'y, The Raggedy Man — he's ist so good 
He spUts the kindlin' an' chops the wood; 
An' nen he spades in our garden, too. 
An' does most things 'at boys can't do. — 
He cltimbed clean up in our big tree 
An' shooked a' apple down fer me — 
An' nothern'n', too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann — 
An' nother'n', too, fer The Raggedy Man. — 
Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man? 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

An' The Raggedy Man one time says he 
Pick' roast' rambos from a' orchurd-tree, 
An' et 'em — all ist roast' an' hot! — 
An' it's so, too! — 'cause a corn-crib got 
Afire one time an' all bum' down 
On "The Smoot Farm," 'bout foiir mile from town- 
On "The Smoot Farm" ! Yes — an' the hired han' 
'At worked there nen 'uz The Raggedy Man! — 
Ain't he the beatin'est Raggedy Man? 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

The Raggedy Man's so good an' kind 
He'll be our "horsey," an' "haw" an' mind 



The Raggedy Man 517 

Ever'thing 'at you make him do — 
An' won't run off — 'less you want him to! 
I drived him wunst way down our lane 
An' he got skeered, when it 'menced to rain, 
An' ist rared up an' squealed and run 
Purt 'nigh away! — an' it's all in fun! 
Nen he skeered ag'in at a' old tin can ... 
Whoa ! y ' old runaway Raggedy Man ! 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

An' The Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes. 
An' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes: 
Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves, 
An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers the'rselves! 
An', wite by the pump in. our pasture-lot. 
He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got, 
'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' can 
Turn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann! 
Er Ma, er Pa, er The Raggedy Man! 
Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man ? 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

An' wunst, when The Raggedy Man come late. 
An' pigs ist root' thue the garden-gate. 
He 'tend like the pigs 'uz bears an' said, 
"Old Bear-shooter 'ill shoot 'em dead!" 
An' race an' chase' 'em, an' they'd ist run 
When he pint his hoe at 'em like it's a gun 
An' go "Bang! — Bang!" nen 'tend he stan' 
An' load up his gun ag'in! Raggedy Man! 
He's an old Bear-shooter Raggedy Man! 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

An' sometimes The Raggedy Man lets on 
We're little ^n'wc^-children, an' old King's gone 
To git more money, an' lef us there — 



5i8 American Literary Readings 

And Robbers is ist thick ever' where; 

An' nen — ef we all won't cry, fer shore — 

The Raggedy Man he'll come and " 'splore 

The Castul-halls," an' steal the "gold" — 

An' steal us, too, an' grab an' hold 

An' pack us ofE to his old " Cave" ! — An' 

Haymow's the "cave" o' The Raggedy Man!' — 
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

The Raggedy Man — one time, when he 
Was makin' a Uttle bow-'n'-orry fer me, 
Says "When you're big like your Pa is, 
Air you go' to keep a fine store like his — 
An' be a rich merchunt — an' wear fine clothes? — 
Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows!" 
I An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann, 

An' I says " 'M go' to be a Raggedy Man! — 

I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!" 

Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man! 

From the Biographical Edition of the Complete Works of James Whitcomb 
Riley. Copyright 1913. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs- 
Merrill Company. 




WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 
1869-1910 

William Vaughn Moody is as yet far from being a widely 
known poet, and perhaps he will never be a widely popular 
one; but like Sidney Lanier he will no doubt have a steady 
growth of fame, and in the estimation of those who are 
prepared to recognize his artistic work in the subtle metrical 
harmonies and the deeper interpretative thought of the 
modem world, he will surely take his place as one of our 
major American poets. He has done creditable work in 
literary criticism and the history of literature, and creative 
work in the pure lyric, in the poetic drama, and in the prose 
or acting drama; and although he died before reaching the 
full development of his genius, he accomplished enough to 
make him the most important of the younger poets of 
America. 

He was bom at Spencer, Indiana, July 8, 1869. About 
three years after his birth his parents moved to New Albany 
on the Ohio River. Here he grew into young manhood only 
to be doubly orphaned by the death of his mother when he 
was fifteen and of his father two years later. Left to his own 
resources at this immature age, he determined to secure for 
himself the best possible education. He taught school for a 
while near New Albany, and then went to New York to 
become an assistant teacher in an academy where he could 
himself obtain further instruction. He finally entered 
Harvard University and continued his undergraduate work 
for four years, and then went abroad as a tutor in a private 
family. 

After a memorable year in Europe, he returned to Harvard 
and entered upon graduate work. Two years later, in 1894, 
he was graduated with the Master's degree, and the next 
year he became an instructor in English in the University 
of Chicago. With numerous vacation intermissions he con- 
tinued in the work of teaching until 1902, when he perma- 
nently relinquished his professional position to devote 
himself to creative writing. During the years spent in 
Chicago he made several trips abroad and a number of 

[519] 



520 American Literary Readings 

bicycle and walking tours with his friends in his own country. 
He loved outdoor life, and had an insatiable desire to mix 
with all classes of people and thus see life at all sorts of 
angles. His friendships were very important to him, and 
no man perhaps ever had more devoted and intimate com- 
panions. In collaboration with Robert M. Lovett, he pre- 
pared a textbook on the history of English literature, and 
the success of this volume, and of several other books which 
he edited for school use, enabled him to carry out his long- 
cherished design of giving up entirely his work in the class- 
room. Professor John M. Manly urged him again and 
again to give a series of lectures at the University of Chicago 
after he had formally resigned, but he steadfastly refused, 
saying, "I cannot do it; I feel that at every lecture I slay a 
poet." 

He had been contributing poems to the best magazines 
since hiS Harvard University days, but it was not until 
toward the close of the nineties that he began to find his 
individual note. In 1900 he contributed to Scribner's Maga- 
zine what he considered his best lyric, — -namely, "Gloucester 
Moors." Among his other distinctive poems are "The 
Brute," a poem after the manner of Kipling, on machinery 
and its effects on modern life; "The Menagerie," a delight- 
ful Browning-like treatment of the theme of evolution from 
the point of view of a half -drunken man fresh from the 
menagerie of a circus; "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philip- 
pines" and "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," passionate 
outcries against American imperialism; and "The Daguerre- 
otype," a wonderful tribute to the memory of his mother. 
Professor Manly says that this last poem is "so deep of 
thought, so full of poignant feeling and clairvoyant vision, 
so wrought of passionate beauty that I know not where 
to look for another tribute from any poet to his mother 
that equals it." 

Moody's most ambitious work was his unfinished trilogy 
of poetic dramas, "The Fire-bringer," "The Masque of 
Judgment," and "The Death of Eve." The last, which was 
to round out and complete the series, is left in fragmentary 
form, but the final theme is more or less adequately treated in 
the blank verse poem of the same title. There is a wonderful 
array of fine poetry here, but the number of readers who can 
fully appreciate the quality of Moody's art is unfortunately 
limited. Professor Manly says that Moody's poetry even 



William Vaughn Moody 521 

in its simplest forms does not always reveal its meaning to 
the careless and casual reader, and most young readers will 
find these dramas to be a severe test upon their intellectual 
and interpretative powers. But such poetry has in it lasting 
qualities, and will always repay the student for his efforts 
to comprehend and appreciate it. Some of Moody's finest 
lyrics, too, are imbedded in these blank verse dramas. 

The third type of writing in which Moody succeeded 
admirably was that of the prose or acting drama. "The 
Great Divide" is perhaps the most original and successful 
native play produced on the American stage within the 
past quarter century. "The J'aith Healer" was not so 
popular with the playgoing public, but it is a composition 
of wonderful literary appeal, and if not so good as an act- 
ing play, is certainly worthy of remembrance as a literary 
drama. 

In spite of his outdoor habits and simple living, Moody's 
health failed in 1909, and after a few months of happiness 
in his marriage with Harriet V. Brainerd, a woman whose 
companionship had meant much to him for several years 
preceding their marriage, he succumbed on October 17, 19 10, 
cut off, as it were, in the full flush of his genius. 

In the excellent introduction to the two-volume edition 
of Moody's poems and dramas Professor Manly admirably 
epitomizes the forcefulness of this new poet's work in these 
words: "Moody's poetry, whether due to a direct impulse 
from life or suggested, like 'The Dialogue in Purgatory' and 
'The Fountain' and 'Thamuz' by literature, is notable for 
its freedom from response to the obvious, the trivial, the 
merely pretty. This is, no doubt, one reason why, for all 
his rich and various melody, his wealth of fresh and vivid 
imagery, his modernity, his worship of beauty and love, 
his depth of spiritual emotion, he is not popular, is indeed 
hardly remembered by any except those to whom poetry is 
not an idle pastime, but a passion; for the idler wants art 
in all its forms to be obvious, and trivial and pretty. 
Moody's themes are often the common themes of poetry: 
love, patriotism, human suffering, God, and the soul. 
But he sees them ever from a new angle, he finds in them 
new significance, he mingles them with unaccustomed but 
predestined associations. His vision and feeling are not 
simple, but interwoven with rich threads of reflection and 
transmuting emotion." 



GLOUCESTER MOORS 

A mile behind is Gloucester town 
Where the fishing fleets put in, 
A mile ahead the land dips down 
And the Woods and farms begin. 
Here, where the moors stretch free 
In the high blue afternoon, 
Are the marching sun and talking sea. 
And the racing winds that wheel and flee 
On the flying heels of June. 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue. 

Blue is the quaker-maid. 

The wild geranium holds its dew 

Long in the boulder's shade. 

Wax -red hangs the cup 

From the huckleberry boughs, 

In barberry bells the grey moths sup, 

Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up 

Sweet bowls for their carouse. 

Over the shelf of the sandy cove 

Beach-peas blossom late. 

By copse and clifif the swallows rove 

Each calling to his mate. 

Seaward the sea-gulls go, 

And the land-birds all are here ; 

That green-gold flash was a vireo, 

And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow 

Was a scarlet tanager. 

This earth is not the steadfast place 
We landsmen build upon ; 

[522] 



Gloucester Moors 523 

From deep to deep she varies pace, so 

And while she comes is gone. 

Beneath my feet I feel 

Her smooth bulk heave and dip; 

With velvet plunge and soft upreel 

She swings and steadies to her keel ss 

Like a gallant, gallant ship. 

These summer clouds she sets for sail, 

The sun is her masthead light, 

She tows the moon like a pinnace frail 

Where her phosphor wake churns bright. 40 

Now hid, now looming clear, 

On the face of the dangerous blue 

The star fleets tack and wheel and veer. 

But on, but on does the old world steer 

As if her port she knew. 40 

God, dear God ! Does she know her port, 

Though she goes so far about ? 

Or blind astray, does she make her sport 

To brazen and chance it out? 

I watched when her captains passed: so 

She were better captainless. 

Men in the cabin, before the mast. 

But some were reckless and some aghast. 

And some sat gorged at mess. 

By her battened hatch I leaned and caught oe 

Sounds from the noisome hold, — 

Cursing and singing of souls distraught 

And cries too sad to be told. 

Then I strove to go down and see; 

But they said, "Thou art not of us!" m 

I turned to those on the deck with me 



524 American Literary Readings 

And cried, ' ' Give help ! " But they said , ' ' Let be : 
Our ship sails faster thus." 

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, 
5 Blue is the quaker-maid, 

The alder-clump where the brook comes through 

Breeds cresses in its shade. 

To be out of the moiling street 

With its swelter and its sin ! 
a Who has given to me this sweet, 

And given my brother dust to eat? 

And when will his wage come in? 

Scattering wide or blown in ranks, 

Yellow and white and brown, 
5 Boats and boats from the fishing banks 

Come home to Gloucester town. 

There is cash to purse and spend. 

There are wives to be embraced. 

Hearts to borrow and hearts to lend, 
And hearts to take and keep to the end, — 

O little sails, make haste! 

But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, 

What harbor town for thee? 

What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, 
5 Shall crowd the banks to see? 

Shall all the happy shipmates then 

Stand singing brotherly ? 

Or shall a haggard ruthless few 

Warp her over and bring her to, 
While the many broken souls of men 

Fester down in the slaver's pen, 

And nothing to say or do? 



THE NOTES 

Rip Van Winkle (Irving) 



INTRODUCTORY: 

Irving was living in England when he wrote The Sketch Book of 
Geoffrey Crayon. In 1819 he sent the manuscript to New York in 
separate sections to be published serially. In the first number, 
published in May, there were five sketches, of which "Rip Van 
Winkle" was the last. Irving's sources for this tale were partly 
local traditions about Henry Hudson and his crew, and about Indian 
legends concerning the spirits that dwell in the Catskills. The long- 
sleep device has been frequently used in romance and fairy lore. 
"The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus" is an old l^atin medieval legend 
telling how seven Christians slept in a cave for three hundred and 
sixty years. In the French fairy tale of "Rosebud, or The Sleeping 
Beauty," the young princess sleeps one hundred years until she is 
wakened by the kiss of a prince. In Ludwig Tieck's "The Elves," 
the little girl Mary sleeps seven years. But Irving's sources, as he 
himself hints in the note at the end of the story, were the legends 
concerning the tales about Emperor Frederick I, or Barbarossa, and the 
Kyffhauser, or the Kyffhauser Mountain legends. The principal Hartz 
Mountain legend is that told by Johann Karl Nachtigal, who, under the 
pseudonym of Otmar, published Folks-sagen or "Popular Traditions of 
the Hartz Mountains" in 1800. Irving probably saw this in the original 
German when he was studying that language during his first trip abroad. 
In order that it may be seen exactly how an author may use a source 
we give here Thomas Roscoe's translation of "Peter Klaus," which 
appeared in 1826, seven years later than Irving's story. 

Peter Klaus, the Goatherd 

In the village of Sittendorf at the foot- of a mountain lived Peter Klaus, 
a goatherd, who was in the habit of pasturing his flock upon the Kyffhauser 
hills. Towards evening he generally let them browze upon a green plot 
not far ofT, surrounded with an old ruined wall from which he could take 
a muster of his whole flock. 

For some days past he had observed that one of the prettiest goats, 
soon after its arrival at this spot, usually disappeared, nor joined the fold 
again until late in the evening. He watched her again and again, and at 
last found that she slipped through a gap in the old wall, whither he followed 
her. It led into a passage which widened, as he went, into a cavern; and 
here he saw the goat employed in picking up the oats that fell through some 
crevices in the place above. He looked up, shook his ears at this odd shower 
of corn, but could discover nothing. Where the deuce could it come from? 
At length he heard over his head the neighing and stamping of horses; he 
listened, and concluded that the oats must have fallen through the manger 
when they were fed. The poor goatherd was sadly puzzled what to think 
of these horses in this uninhabited part of the mountain, but so it was, for 
the groom making his appearance, without saying a word beckoned him 
to follow him. Peter obeyed, and followed him up some steps which brought 
him into an open courtyard surrounded by old walls. At the side of this 
was a still more spacious cavern, surrounded by rocky heights which only 
admitted a kind of twilight through the overhanging trees and shrubs. 

[525] 



526 American Literary Readings 

He went on, and came to a smooth shaven green, where he saw twelve 
ancient knights none of whom spoke a word, engaged in playing nine pins. 
His guide now beckoned to Peter in silence, to pick up the nine pins, and 
went his way. Trembling in every Joint Peter did not venture to disobey, 
and at times cast a stolen glance at the players, whose long beards and 
slashed doublets were not at all in the present fashion. By degrees his 
looks grew bolder; he took particular notice of everything round him; 
among other things, observing a tankard near him filled with wine, whose 
odour was excellent, he took a good draught. It seemed to inspire him 
with life; and whenever he began to feel tired of running, he applied with 
fresh ardour to the tankard, which always renewed his strength. But 
finally it quite overpowered him, and he fell asleep. 

When he next opened his eyes, he found himself on the grass-plot again, 
in the old spot where he was in the habit of feeding his goats. He rubbed his 
eyes, he looked round, but could see neither dog nor flock; he was surprised 
at the long, rank grass that grew about him, and at the trees and bushes 
which he had never before seen. He shook his head and walked a little far- 
ther, looking for the old sheep path and the hillocks and roads where he 
used daily to drive his flock; but he could find no traces of them left. Yet 
he saw the village just before him; it was the same Sittendorf, and scratching 
his head, he hastened at a quick pace down the hill to enquire after his flock. 

All the people whom he met going into the place were strangers to 
him, were differently dressed, and even spoke in a different style from his 
old neighbors. When he asked about his goats, they only stared at him, 
and fixed their eyes upon his chin. He put his hand unconsciously to his 
mouth, and to his great surprise found that he had got a beard, at least 
a foot long. He now began to think that both he and all the world about 
him were in a dream : and yet he knew the mountain for that of Kyffhausen 
(for he had just come down it) well enough. And there were the cottages 
with their gardens and grass-plots, much as he had left them. Besides, the 
lads who had all collected around him answered to the enquiry of a passen- 
ger, what place it was, "Sittendorf, Sir." 

. Still shaking his head, he went farther into the village to look for his 
own house. He found it, but greatly altered for the worse; a strange goat- 
herd in an old tattered frock lay before the door, and near him his old dog, 
which growled and showed its teeth at Peter when he called him. He went 
through the entrance which had once been a door, but all within was empty 
and deserted. Peter staggered like a drunken man out of the house, and 
called for his wife and children by their names. But no one heard him, 
and no one gave him any answer. 

Soon, however, a crowd of women and children got round the inquisitive 
stranger with the long, hoary beard, and asked him what it was he wanted. 
Now Peter thought it was such a strange kind of thing to stand before his 
own house, enquiring for his own wife and children, as well as about him- 
self, that evading these enquiries he pronounced the first name that came 
into his head: "Kurt Steffen, the blacksmith." Most of the spectators 
were silent, and only looked at him wistfully, till an old woman at last said: 
"Why, for these twelve years he has been at Sachsenburg, whence, I suppose 
you are not come to-day." "Where is Valentine Meier, the tailor?" "The 
Lord rest his soul," cried another old woman leaning upon her crutch, "he 
has been lying more than these fifteen years in a house he will never leave." 

Peter recognized in the speakers two of his Young neighbors who seemed 
to have grown old very suddenly, but he had no inclination to enquire any 
farther. At this moment there appeared making her way through the 
crowd of spectators a sprightly young woman with a year-old baby in her 
hand, all three as like his wife he was seeking for as possible. "What are 
your names?" he enquired in a tone of great surprise. "Mine is Maria." 
"And your father's?" continued Peter. "God rest his soul! Peter Klaus 
to be sure. It is now twenty years ago since we were all looking for him 
day and night upon the Kiffhausen; for his flock came home without him, 
and I was then," continued the woman, "only seven years old." 



The Notes 527 

The goatherd could no longer bear this: "I am Peter Klaus," he said, 
"Peter and no other," and he took his daughter's child and kissed it. The 
spectators appeared struck dumb with astonishment, until first one and then 
another began to say, "Yes, indeed, this is Peter Klaus! Welcome, good 
neighbor, after twenty years of absence, welcome home." 

According to Lowell, a literary idea belongs to him at last who 
says it best, and so the whole series of tales dealing with long sleeps 
is now dominated by Irving's "Rip Van Winkle." So well known 
has Rip become through Irving's story and through Joseph Jefferson's 
dramatization of it that the very name has become a synonym for a 
sleepy old fellow who is about twenty years behind the times. 

EXPLANATORY: 

7. thylke. That same; an old word composed of the and ilk, the 
(or that) same. 

7. Cartwright. William Cartwright, an English playwright of 
the early seventeenth century. 

7:2. Knickerbocker. Irving said the name was compounded from 
Knicker, to nod, and booker, books, or one who nods over his books. 

7 : 27. "more in sorrow than in anger." Hamlet, I:ii. 

7 : 33- Waterloo Medal, or a Queen Anne' s Farthing. The Waterloo 
medals were given to the British soldiers who fought in the battle of 
Waterloo, and the Queen Anne's farthing was a coin supposed to 
be of great rarity. The joke on the hard Dutch cakes is evident. 

7 : 35. Kaatskill Mountains. Why does Irving use this old spell- 
ing? The word kill means creek or river, as in Schuylkill. 

8 : 50. a village. When a young boy wrote to Irving asking him 
whether it was the village of Catskill or Kingston, the author playfully 
replied that he could find nothing in Mr. Knickerbocker's manu- 
script to indicate which village was intended. 

8 : 56. Peter Stuyvesant. Governor of the Dutch colony of New 
Netherlands from 1647 to 1664. See Irving's account of him in 
Knickerbocker' s History of New York. 

8 : 68. Fort Christina. The Swedish settlement near what is now 
Wilmington, Delaware. Stuyvesant captured it in 1655. 

9 : 80. termagant. Formerly applied to a violent or overbearing 
person, but now only to a boisterous or quarreling woman. What is 
the meaning of tolerable in the next line? 

9 : 84. good wives. Wife is used here in the generic sense of 
woman rather than specifically as a married woman. 

10 : 131. galligaskins. Long, loose trousers. 

12 : 185. junto. An organization for furthering some cause, 
especially of political intrigue. 

15 : 293. doublets . . . jerkins. The doublet was a close-fitting 
outer garment with sleeves. The jerkin was a jacket or waistcoat. 

15 • 303- hanger. A short broadsword worn hanging from the belt. 

18: 426. an unkind cut. "This was the most unkindest cut of 
aW {Julius Caesar, III:ii). 

19 : 442. red night-cap. This was used as a symbol of republican- 
ism in the French Revolution. It has also been adopted in our image 
of the goddess of liberty, as may be seen in the engraving on our coins. 

19 : 465. Babylonish jargon. An allusion to the tower of Babel 
(Genesis 11:1-9). 



528 American Literary Readings 

20 : 475. Federal or Democrat. The Federalists were loose con- 
structionists and the Democrats strict -constructionists of the Con- 
stitution. Hamilton was a leading member of the Federal party, 
and Jefferson of the Democratic party. 

21 : 507. Stony Point. A rocky promontory on the Hudson, 
captured by General Anthony Wayne in 1779. 

21: 508. Antony's Nose. Another promontory just north of Stony 
Point. Irving gives a humorous account of the naming of this prom- 
ontory in Knickerbocker' s History of New York, Book VI, chap. 4. 

23 : 585. the historian. Adrian van der Donck, author of a Dutch 
history of New Netherlands. 

23 ' 593- That it was affirmed. In this and the next sentence the 
main predication is omitted. Supply the omission. 

23 : 594- Hendrick Hudson. Henry Hudson, an English sailor in 
the service of the Dutch East India Company, in attempting to dis- 
cover a northwest passage to India navigated the Hudson River and 
also discovered Hudson Bay. The Half-moon was the name of his ship. 
Why does Irving spell the name Hendrick? 

25: 659. Frederick der Rothbart. Frederick I of Germany, called 
Barbarossa, or Redbeard, died 1190. A legend arose to the effect 
that he was not dead but held spellbound in an underground castle, 
where he must remain as long as the ravens fly about the mountain. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the purpose of the introductory note about finding 
the manuscript of the story in Diedrich Knickerbocker's posthumous 
papers? How had Irving won fame under this pseudonym ten years 
before the appearance of the Sketch Book? (2) Examine also the note 
and the postscript at the end of the story. What is the chief value 
to the story of this framework of pretended notes from Mr. Knicker- 
bocker? (3) With what element does Irving begin the story — setting, 
characters, or action? Is this a good way to begin a story like this? 
Why? (4) Why are the mountains spoken of as "barometers," 
"fairy mountains," and the like? (5) Why is Rip the first character 
to be introduced? (6) Give a full description of his appearance. 
(7) Discuss his character and habits, including his relations to his 
wife, his dog, his cronies, and others. (8) What humorous touches 
do you discover in Irving's treatment of Rip? (9) Is Rip well suited 
to play the part of a lackey or "subject" in the supernatural events 
which follow? Why? Do you think he might want to sleep twenty 
years? (10) Describe Dame Van Winkle's character. What light 
do Wolf's actions throw on this topic? (11) What does Dame Van 
Winkle's character have to do with the development of the narrative, 
that is, with the events which follow? (12) Why is the club or junto 
introduced? Are its members reverted to a little further on in the 
story? (13) At what point does the main action of the narrative begin? 
Note how many pages Irving has consumed in his leisurely introduc- 
tion. Do most modern stories move so slowly as this? Do you 
think Irving is justified in making such a full analysis of characters 
before he begins the main action of the story? Explain why. (14) 
Notice that Irving gives a picture of the mountain scenery instead of 
recounting the details of Rip's day of hunting. Just why does he do 
this? Do you think the pictures are good? Compare these two 
paragraphs with the first two paragraphs for picturesque effects. 



The Notes 529 

(15) Tell in your own words the peculiar happenings just as Rip 
started to descend the mountain. (16) Are the strange characters 
vividly presented? Tell just how they look to you. What historical 
period and what particular characters do they represent? (17) How 
much space does Irving devote to Rip after he fell asleep and before 
the awakening? Might a less skillful writer have filled in a page or 
so of description here to denote the passage of time? (18) How long 
did Rip think he had slept? (19) Is the waking natural? How does 
Irving manage to disclose the wonderful changes that had taken place 
in Rip and his surroundings? Note particularly the order in which 
things are taken up — the gun, the dog, the stiffness in Rip's joints, 
his hunger, and the like. (20) What things had apparently not 
changed during his sleep? Is this a natural touch? (21) Do you 
think it a little strange that Rip did not notice his long beard until 
he reached the village? Why is this point delayed? (22) Show just 
how the changes in the village are gradually disclosed. To what cause 
did Rip attribute his confusion? (23) What humorous and pathetic 
touches are found in the paragraphs describing Rip's visit to his own 
home? Was it Wolf or perhaps a dog like Wolf that snarled at 
him? (24) Does the name of the new keeper of the inn, now a hotel, 
sound like the previous Dutch names? Why this change? (25) What 
did Rip learn when he called for his old associates? (26) What 
ironical and humorous effect is produced when he asks if nobody 
knows Rip Van Winkle? (27) Who finally tells Rip that he went 
away twenty years ago? Was this the proper person to do it? De- 
scribe the recognition scene. (28) How did Rip spend his last days? 

(29) Go over the story now and point out its main divisions, thus 
making a complete outline. Notice first the setting; then the leisurely 
introductory description of characters; then the account of the hunting 
trip, which is the beginning of the narrative proper; next the strange 
party at ninepins; then Rip's sleep; his awakening; his return to the 
village; the recognition; and finally Rip's after life, as a conclusion. 

(30) In a second perusal do you see many natural hints or suggestive 
preparations for succeeding incidents? (31) Point out exact refer- 
ences to show the date and extent of time covered, and thus make a 
time outline of the story. (32) Point out five of the wittiest sayings 
in the story. (33) Make a study of "Peter Klaus" (see introductory 
note above) and determine just what Irving has taken, what he has left 
out, and what he has added in writing his own story. (34) Suggested 
composition subjects: Rip's Character; Comparison of the Humor of 
"Rip Van Winkle" with That of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; 
write a story incorporating some local legend; Comparison of Joseph 
Jefferson's Dramatization with the Original Story; How Irving Used 
His Sources (see introductory note). 



Westminster Abbey (Irving) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

"Westminster Abbey" was the first essay in the seventh and 
last number of the Sketch Book when it was published serially in 18 19. 
It is a typical example of the informal or personal essay dealing with 
real scenes and their literary and historical associations. We call the 
essay personal because the author infuses into it a great deal of his 

18 



530 



American Literary Readings 




GROUND FLOOR PLAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

own sentiment and emotion, or personality; and we call it informal 
because it is presented in the easy and natural style of one talking to 
us and giving us his own thoughts and experiences in an informal 
rather than a formal or dignified manner. 



The Notes 531 

EXPLANATORY: 

26. Westminster Abbey. The Abbey, or Cathedral, of St. Peter 
in Westminster, formerly a suburb of London, but now in the midst 
of the city. The Abbey was begun by Edward the Confessor in 1050 
and completed after his death in 1066. In 1245 it was rebuilt by 
Henry VII, and it has since been added to from time to time. It is 
the first of the English cathedrals built on the cruciform plan, and 
it is also first in historic and literary interest. If possible, look up 
further facts about this famous old church. 

26. Christolero' s Epigrams. The correct title is Chrestoleros: Seven 
Books of Epigrams, by Thomas Bastard, 1598. 

27 : 10. Westminster School. Also called St. Peter's College, one of 
the famous English boarding schools, refounded by Elizabeth in 1 560. 

27 : 15. verger. The official keeper of a cathedral ; so called because 
he formerly carried the verge, or rod, signifying ecclesiastical authority. 

28 : 45. Vitalis. Abbas., etc. Names of ancient abbots now 
almost entirely forgotten. 

29 : 89. Poet's Corner. In the south transept. Geoffrey Chaucer 
was buried here in 1400, probably because he was a favorite officer of 
the crown and had his dwelling within the confines of the cathedral. 
Since Cromwell's time others than royalty have been buried in the 
Abbey by way of special national recognition. Longfellow, whose bust 
is in Poets' Corner, is the only American honored by a memorial in 
the Abbey. 

30 : 122. cognizance. A family badge or heraldic device. 

« 30 : 127. crosiers and mitres. A crosier, or crozier, is a bishop's 
staff surmounted "^ith a crook or a cross; a mitre, or miter, is a large 
ornamental headdress worn by bishops and other ecclesiastics. 

30: 131. that fabled ci'y. On the seventeenth night of the 
Arabian Nights' Entertainments, "The Story of the Eldest Lady 
(Zobeide) " relates the finding of a city with all the inhabitants pet- 
rified just as they were in real life. 

30 : 134. buckler . . . morion. A shield ... an open helmet. 

31: 171. tomb of Mrs- Nightingale. The French sculptor Roubillac 
(or Roubiliac) made several notable monuments in Westminster before 
his death in 1762. Irving accurately describes the bizarre statue in 
memory of Joseph Nightingale and his wife Elizabeth. 

32 : 201. Henry the Seventh's chapel. At the east end of the 
Abbey, built about 1500 by Henry VII as a memorial and burial 
place for himself and his family. 

33 : 256. Elizabeth . . . Mary. Look up the account of Queen 
Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots. 

34 : 278. ^'For in the silent grave," etc. Quoted from Beaumont 
and Fletcher's Thierry and Theodoret, IV. 

35 : 311. Edward the Confessor. King of West-Saxons from 1042 
to 1066. He was succeeded by Harold, who was overthrown by 
William of Normandy. 

35- 319- "beds of darkness." Echoing Job 17:13, "If I wait, 
the grave is mine house; I have made my bed in the darkness." 

37 • 378. Sir Thomas Brown{e). An eminent English prose writer 
of the seventeenth century. This quotation and the one below are 
from Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial, his most noted work. 

37 : 389. Cambyses . . ■ . Mizraim . . . Pharaoh. Cambyses 
III, king of Persia, conquered Egypt in the sixth century before Christ. 



532 American Literary Readings 

Mizraim is Hebrew for Egypt; it is also used as the name of one of 
Ham's sons (see Genesis io:6). Pharaoh is a general name for the early 
kings of Egypt. 

37 : 402. a tale that is told. From Psalms 90:9, "We spend our 
years as a tale that is told." 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

(i) In what mood and from what mental point of view does 
Irving open this essay? How does the day harmonize with this mood? 
(2) Why is the first personal pronoun used so frequently throughout 
the essay? Is it objectionable? (3) Trace Irving's course through the 
Abbey by reference to the plate given on p. 530. (Note that he 
enters from the southwest. After passing through Westminster School 
and the cloisters, he reaches the Abbey proper, entering at the 
south transept door [see the sixth paragraph]. After giving the first 
general impressions, he passes on to the Poets' Corner in the south tran- 
sept. He then goes on around through the kings' tombs until he 
reaches the Nightingale tomb in the north transept. Then he wanders 
around from tomb to tomb and chapel to chapel until he comes to the 
great Henry VII's chapel in the east wing, to which, including the ' 
reflections on the noise of the outside world, he gives ten paragraphs. 
On his way out he stops at the magnificent shrine of Edward the 
Confessor in the very heart of the Abbey, and mounting this tomb, 
he takes a last general survey of the great mausoleum, and finally 
passes out the north entrance. The conclusion draws some lessons 
on the emptiness of human renown and the fleetness of all-consuming 
time.) (4) The notable thing about the essay is the blending of 
vivid aescription with quiet musing or reverie. Point out some of 
the paragraphs which best bring out this blending, and read them 
aloud in the appropriate tone and movement. (5) Do you get a better 
idea of the Abbey from this essay than you could from a guide book? 
Why does Irving not give the history of the Abbey, its dimensions, its 
architectural details? (6) You might expect from Irving some touches 
of humor. Are there any in this essay? Why? (7) Read the para- 
graph on Poets' Corner, and test what is said about the influence of 
authors by applying it to Irving himself. (8) Give the general 
characteristics of Irving's style in this essay. (Simplicity, clearness, 
elegance, smoothness, grace, and melody; blending of sentiment and 
picturesqueness; dominant personal tone.) (9) Suggested themes for 
compositions: A Comparison of Irving's Visit to Westminster Abbey 
with That of Sir Roger de Coverley {Spectator, No. 26) ; Westminster 
Abbey: Its History and Architecture; A Visit to Our Local Cemetery. 

The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper) 
Chapter III (Hawk-eye, Chingachgook, and Uncas) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

The Last of the Mohicans, the best and most widely read of all 
Cooper's novels, was written in 1825 and was published early in 1826. 
It has since been reprinted in almost innumerable editions both for 
the general reader and for school use. The earlier editions contained 
many errors in syntax and infelicities of diction which were removed 
•in later editions; in our text we have preferred to give the author the 
benefit of these improvements. Cooper's stories should be read and 



The Notes 533 

judged as wholes rather than by excerpts. The third chapter is here 
reprinted more to pique interest than to show Cooper at his best, 
though the selection is a good average sample of his style and is 
especially valuable in that it presents, largely through conversation, 
the three principal characters of the romance. After this selection 
has been studied carefully, the pupil should be encouraged to read the 
remainder of the story more as a pleasure than as a set task. 

EXPLANATORY: 

46. Before these fields, etc. Quoted from Bryant's "An Indian 
at the Burial Place of His Fathers." Cooper usually followed the 
custom of placing a quotation as a motto or headpiece to give a hint 
as to the contents of the chapter. 

46: I. Heyward and his confiding companions. In the preceding 
chapter Major Heyward, who was intrusted with the duty of escorting 
Cora and Alice, the daughters of General Webb, from Fort Edward 
to Fort William Henry, was being led into an ambush by Magna, a 
treacherous Indian guide. 

47 : 36. chivalrous scalping-tuft. The North American warrior 
caused the hair to be plucked from his whole body; a small tuft only 
was left on the crown of his head in order that his enemy might avail 
himself of it in wrenching off the scalp in the event of his fall. The 
scalp was the only admissible trophy of victory. Thus, it was deemed 
more important to obtain the scalp than to kill the man. Some tribes 
lay great stress on the honor of striking a dead body. These practices 
have nearly disappeared among the Indians of the Atlantic States. 
{Cooper.) 

47 • 53- hunting- shirt. The hunting-shirt is a picturesque smock 
frock, being shorter, and ornamented with fringes and tassels. The 
colors are intended to imitate the hues of the wood with a view to 
concealment. Many corps of American riflemen have been thus 
attired, and the dress is one of the most striking of modern times. 
The hunting-shirt is frequently white. {Cooper.) 

48 : 63. rifle of great length. The rifle of the army is short; that 
of the hunter is always long. {Cooper.) 

48: 74. Chingachgook. The Indian name means "big serpent." 
Pronounced chin-ga-gook'. 

48: 81. the big river. The Mississippi. The scout alludes to 
a tradition which is very popular among the tribes of the Atlantic 
states. Evidence of their Asiatic origin is deduced from the circum- 
stances, though great uncertainty hangs over the whole history of the 
Indians. {Cooper.) 

48 : 89. Hawk-eye. The name of the famous scout as given in 
The Pioneers, the first of the series of Leatherstocking Tales, is Natty 
Bumppo, Natty being an abbreviation of Nathaniel. In this first 
story he is also called Leatherstocking on account of his leather 
leggings, and in other tales he is given other appropriate names. 1 

49 : 108. wooden gun. Bow and arrow. ' 

49 : III. Iroquois. This was a large federation of various Indian 
tribes living west of the Mohicans around lakes Erie and Ontario. 

50 : 137. Mohicans. A part of the Algonkin or Delaware tribe. 
The Indian name Mohicanni or Mohegan means wolf. Cooper indi- 
cates in his introduction to The Last of the Mohicans that these eastern 
tribes were fast disappearing, and thus explains the title of his novel. 



534 American Literary Readings 

50 : 146. water . . . sweet in the shade . . . bitter in the sun. 
Hawk-eye is thinking of the diflference between the sweet waters of 
the inland or shaded streams and the salty water of the ocean. 

51 : 184. Alligewi. A traditional tribe often mentioned by the 
Algonkins as their predecessors in the occupation of central New York. 

51 : 187. Maquas. Another name for the Mohawks, the enemies 
of the Algonkins. 

51 : 192. salt . . . licks. Inland salt springs gave rise to salt^ 
licks, where the animals came to lick the ground to obtain salt. Cooper' 
explains that these were famous spots for hunters to waylay their game. 

52 : 221. Sagamore. An Indian name for chieftain. 

53 : 261. busy Frenchman. So printed in the first edition, but 
frequently misprinted bushy in later editions. 

55 : 316. Six Nations. That is, the Six (originally Five) Allied 
Nations of Indians who occupied the New York territory. Cooper 
gives a full note on them at the beginning of Chapter II. 

55 : 324. The horses of white men. This was Major Heyward and 
his party approaching. In the next chapter the scout and his Indian 
friends perceive that Heyward and the two young ladies are being 
led into a trap by the treacherous Indian runner Magua. Read the 
entire story. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the principal function of this chapter (see the intro- 
ductory note)? (2) What appropriateness do you see in the poetical 
motto at the head of the chapter? Do modern novelists ever use this 
device? (3) What is the rhetorical function of the first paragraph? 
Why are the words unsuspecting, confiding, treacherous, introduced 
here? (4) What topics are developed in the next three paragraphs? 
(5) The usual function of dialogue is to develop the situation, portray 
character, and propel the narrative or action of the story. Does the 
conversation in this chapter fulfill these functions adequately? (6) 
Give the substance of the first part of Hawk-eye's and Chingachgook's 
talk together. What does this section suggest to you in regard to the 
education of Hawk-eye? (7) Why is it wise to present rather fully 
the previous history and present troubles of the Mohicans? (8) Who 
was "the last of the Mohicans"? How is he brought on the scene? 
(9) What is said about the Maquas, and what has this to do with 
later developments in the story? (10) Describe the incident of the 
slaying of the deer by Uncas. (11) What i's the function of the last 
incident in this chapter? Why does Hawk-eye mention the Iroquois 
in the very last sentence? (12) Study carefully the language put 
into the mouths of the characters. Is Cooper successful in preserving 
the peculiarities of the individuals and of the Indian language as it 
is traditionally reported to us? (13) Collect a list of peculiar meta- 
phorical or interpretative expressions found in this chapter, such as 
"setting sun" for west, "salt lake" for the ocean, etc. (14) Explain 
the means by which the author arouses your interest in this chapter. 

Thanatopsis (Bryant) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This celebrated poem, now usually considered the first great 
poem written in America, was composed in its earlier form by Bryant 



The Notes 535 

in his seventeenth year (181 1), but not pubUshed until 1817, when 
it appeared in the September number of the North American Review. 
Bryant's father found it in the young poet's desk and carried it to 
Mr. Willard Phillips, one of the three editors of the North American 
Review. When Phillips read the poem to his colleagues, Richard 
Henry Dana said, "Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon; no 
one on this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." 
The source of Bryant's interest in subjects of this kind is traceable to 
the so-called "graveyard" poems, such as Henry Kirke White's 
melancholy verse, Blair's "The Grave," Bishop Proteus's poem on 
"Death," and Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." 
In its original form the poem was shorter by seventeen lines at the 
beginning and sixteen at the end. Thus it will be seen that the germ 
or central thought of the poem begins abruptly in the middle of line 
17, "Yet a few days," and ends similarly in the middle of line 66, 
"And make their bed with thee." The introductory and concluding 
lines were added when the poem was included in the first edition of 
Bryant's poems, published in 1821. Many verbal changes in both 
the original and the enlarged versions were made from time to time, 
and practically always for the better, so that we may well agree with 
Poe's statement that the poem owes a good part of its celebrity "to 
its nearly absolute freedom from defect." 

EXPLANATORY: 

62. Thanatopsis. A view of death; from two Greek words, 
6aVaro5, death, and o^zS, view. 

62 : 2. Communion with her visible forms. The first sentence is 
distinctly Wordsworthian in thought and tone. 

63^: 50. Take the wings of morning. "If I take the wings of 
the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there 
shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalms 
139:9, ID). 

63 : 51. Barca's. Barca is a desert region in northern Africa. 
'63 : 53- Oregon. Now known as the Columbia River in Oregon. 

63 : 66. make their bed with thee. "If I make my bed in hell, 
behold, thou art there" (Psalms 139:8). 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What general introductory thought is developed in the first 
sentence? (2) How is the specific theme of the poem led up to in 
the second sentence? What poetic imagery is used to bring the 
subject of death vividly before the mind? (3) What "still voice" 
(line 17) speaks to those who are burdened with the thought of death? 
The body of the poem, then, is made up of the speech of Nature to 
man on the subject of death, is it not? (4) Write out briefly the 
argument of the poem from this point, giving only the principal thoughts 
advanced. (Suggestion: "In a short time death will claim you, and 
your body will be placed in the earth to be resolved again into its 
elements. Yet you will not go alone, for you will find there the 
beautiful, the great, the good of all ages," etc.) (5) What is the 
exact meaning of "Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy 
growth"? (6) What is the effect on the mind of the image beginning 
"To be a brother to the insensible rock"? (7) What is the advantage 
of selecting the oak as the specific image in the thought of line 30? 



536 American Literary Readings 

(8) Why does the poet represent the earth as a magnificent couch in 
line 33? Does he revert to this image again? Where? (9) What 
characters are suggested to your mind by the phrase "patriarchs of 
the infant world"? (10) Why is the epithet "rock-ribbed" a par- 
ticularly happy one for the hills? (11) Read aloud the passage 
beginning "The hills" (line 37) and comment on the imagery of these 
eight lines. (12) Just what is suggested to your mind by the ex- 
pression "Take the wings of morning" (line 50)? This is echoed 
from the Bible; does this fact increase its effectiveness here? (13) 
What are some of the "favorite phantoms" (line 64) that men pursue? 
(14) With what fine moral thought does Nature conclude her dis- 
course? (15) Analyze the beautiful imagery in which this thought is 
expressed. Do you see vividly the "innumerable caravan" winding 
toward "the silent halls of death"? What do you think of the con- 
trast drawn in the last lines? What would be the exact interpretation 
of "dungeon" and "couch" in this passage? (16) Some have called 
this a pagan rather than a Christian poem, meaning thereby that there 
is nothing in it which a pagan philosopher might not have said. Do 
you think the omission of the Christian teachings of immortality and 
resurrection of the body is a serious lack in the poem? Is there any- 
thing in the poem which denies these doctrines? Is it necessary for 
a poet to mix his theology with his art? (17) In what meter is this 
poem written? Scan the first five lines. (18) Notice how many of 
the lines are run-on lines; that is, the sense runs on without a pause 
from line to line. There is not even a comma at the end of a single 
line of the first ten. What is the stylistic effect of this? Are the 
long-cadenced sentences well suited to the thought of the poem? 

(19) How would you characterize the tone quality, movement, and 
general manner of the style? (Suggestion: Melancholy, sonorous, 
deep- voiced; slow, stately, dignified; majestic, reposeful, restrained.) 

(20) Memorize the first eight and the last nine lines; and also lines 37 
to 45. (21) Suggested composition subjects: How " Thanatopsis " 
Affects Me; Bryant's Treatment of Nature; Bryant's Indebtedness to 
Wordsworth; Comparison of "Thanatopsis" with Gray's "Elegy." 

To a Waterfowl (Bryant) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem, first published in the North American Review, March, 
1818, had its origin in a personal experience. On December 15, 1815, 
Bryant, who was then twenty-one years old and had just been admitted 
to the bar, went to the little village of Plainfield a few miles from his 
father's home at Cummington in western Massachusetts, to see if he 
could find any encouragement for opening a law office there. Parke 
Godwin, his biographer, thus describes the incident as related by 
Bryant himself. "He felt, as he walked up the hills, very forlorn and 
desolate indeed, not knowing what was to become of him in the big 
world, which grew bigger as he ascended, and yet darker with the 
coming on of night. The sun had already set, leaving behind it one 
of those brilliant seas of chrysolite and opal which often flood the 
New England skies; and while he was looking upon the rosy splendor 
with rapt admiration, a solitary bird made wing along the illuminated 
horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was lost in the dis- 
tance, asking himself whither it had come and to what far home it 



The Notes 537 

was flying. When he went to the house where he was to stop for the 
night, his mind was still full of what he had seen and felt, and he wrote 
those lines, as imperishable as our language, 'To a Waterfowl.' " 
Matthew Arnold relates an incident of how Hartley Coleridge read 
"To a Waterfowl" to him, calling it "the best short poem in the 
language." Arnold admitted that he was not sure but that Coleridge 
was right in this judgment. 

EXPLANATORY: 

64 : 7. limned upon. Bryant first wrote "painted on " but changed 
it to "limned upon," and in a still later edition to "seen against" 
because he said the image of the bird floating, in the next line, was 
incongruous with the image of a painted picture, which is stationary. 
Another suggested reading was "shadowed on." Which of them all do 
you think is the best? (Many modern editions retain the reading 
"painted on.") 

64 : 9. plashy. Marshy, watery. 

64 : 10. marge. A poetical form of margin. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Why is the generic waterfowl used in the title rather than a 
specific term like wild duck? (2) What figure of speech pervades the 
entire poem? (Determine to whom the poet is speaking.) _ (3) In 
what pood and tone is the lyric written? Is there any jarring note 
in the whole composition? (3) Explain the figure of speech in the 
second line. (4) Why docS the poet say "vainly the fowler's eye 
might mark thy distant flight"? Was the bird high or low in the 
air? (5) What do we call the power by which a bird knows exactly 
where to go? Is instinct in animals an evidence of a creative design 
in the universe? (6) Why are lines 15 and 16 most imaginative ones? 
(7) Explain why the poet calls the atmosphere cold and thin. (8) 
What transferred epithet do you note in line 19? (9) Is the poem 
just right in length? Could you read the six stanzas preceding "Thou'rt 
gone" while the waterfowl was still in sight? (10) Some critics have 
said that the addition of the moral (last stanza) is inartistic and 
almost spoils the poem. Do you agree with this? Give your reasons. 
(11) Study the form of the stanza. It is composed of four lines in 
iambic rhythm, the first and fourth being trimeter and the second and 
third pentameter, the rime being alternate. It is a rare form, though 
not unknown in English lyric poetry, and was used by Bryant in 
several poems. Note also that each stanza is one complete sentence. 
Do these long, involved sentences add anything to the general effect of 
the style? (12) Memorize the poem. 

The Death of the Flowers (Bryant) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem, which appeared in the second edition of Bryant's 
poems, 1832, was written in 1825. It commemorates the death of 
his sister, Sarah Snell Bryant, who died of consumption in the autumn 
of 1824 at the age of twenty-two. Though she was eight years younger 
than he, the poet was deeply attached to her, and always enjoyed her 



538 American Literary Readings 

companionship. George W. Cable in writing of this poem speaks of 
"those exquisite notes of grief . . . which only draw the tear to fill it 
with the light of a perfect resignation." 

EXPLANATORY: 

66 : 13. wind-flower. The anemone; called wind-fiower because 
of its supposed affinity for the wind in its ear'y spring blossoming 
time. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Outline the poem by stanzas. [Suggestion: (o) Picture of late 
autumn; {b) the flowers are all gone; (c) detailed catalogue of the 
flowers by seasons; {d) the south wind searches for but finds not the 
flowers; (e) the death of the flowers brings thoughts of the death of 
his beautiful young sister who died in the autumn.] (2) Point out 
some of the best minute references to nature. (3) In what tone and 
mood is the poem written? (4) Do the long seven-stressed iambic 
lines add anything to the effect? Note that the pause regularly 
occurs after the fourth foot in each line, so that the effect is almost 
the same as a four-stressed followed by a three-stressed line. (5) Do 
you find a note of resignation in the poet's grief? 



Robert of Lincoln (Bryant) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem appeared for the first time in the 1854 edition of Bryant's 
poems. It is entirely different from the body of his poetry, being 
brighter in tone, more distinctly musical, and lighted up with a touch 
of humor. 

EXPLANATORY: 

68 : 57. Off is his holiday garment laid. In the summer after the 
nesting time, the black and white plumage of the male bird becomes 
a dark buff or brown like that of the female. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the lyric impulse of this song? Do you think 
Bryant was listening to the bird's song as he wrote? (2) Outline the 
progress of the thought. Do you note any analogy between the 
domestic life of the birds and that of men? (3) Why is the female 
called a Quaker wife? (4) Does the poet accurately describe the 
appearance, song, and habits of these birds? (See any good encyclo- 
pedia or bird book for a description.) (5) Point out some slight 
touches of humor here and there in the poem. (6) What is the effect 
of the onomatopoetic refrain? Do you think the words are a good 
imitation of the bird's song? (7) What is the tone of the poem? 
(8) The meter is dactylic tetrameter, a rare form for lyric verse, but 
Bryant handles it very deftly. There are many substitutions of 
two-syllabled feet, both spondaic and trochaic, but the three-syllabled 
feet occur often enough to give the dactylic swing to the poem. The 
last foot in each line is catalectic, that is, the two light syllables are 
omitted. Scan the first stanza. 



The Notes 539 

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking (Whitman) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

This beautiful ode was first published in the Saturday Press, 
December 24, 1859, under the title "A Child's Reminiscences." 
The next year it was included in the third edition of Leaves of Grass 
( 1 860-1 861) under the general title "A Word Out of the Sea" (later 
called "Sea Drift"), and the subtitle "Reminiscence" inserted just 
after line 23. 

EXPLANATORY: 

80 : I. the cradle endlessly rocking. What is this? (See the title 
under which the poem appeared in the i860 edition, introductory 
note above.) 

80 : 3. Ninth-month. September. This is the Quaker method 
of naming the months. See Fifth-month in line 24. 

80 : 9. sad brother. This refers to the bird. See note on line 61. 

80 : 12. thousand responses. Compare line 177. 

80 : 14. the word stronger and more delicious than any. See line 
168 for this word. 

80 : 15. the scene revisiting. That is, as I revisit the scene. 

80 : 23. Paumanok. The Indian name for Long Island and 
Whitman's favorite poetical designation of it. 

81 : 26. Two feather'd guests. Two mocking-birds. See line 2. 

82 : 61. my brother. Whitman, like Burns, looked upon animals 
as his fellow-mortals and brothers. See line 9 above and lines 70, 175 
below, and also line 102 of "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." 

82 : 66. white arms. That is, the jets of white spray, which re- 
mind the poet of a swimmer's white arms. 

84: 133. fierce old mother. The ocean. So also "savage old 
mother," line 141. 

85 : 140. the trio. The bird, the sea, and the boy's soul. 

85 : 143. outselling bard. At a certain time in Whitman's life he 
had what has been called his "conversion," when he became conscious 
of his genius and set himself the task of striking up a new world-song 
of democracy. He dates the first dawnings of his poetical aspirations 
from the influences of nature felt in his boyhood when the full meaning 
of the sad notes of the bird entered his soul. 

85 : 144. Demon. Used here in the old sense of a spirit with 
supernatural intelligence, and not necessarily, as later, a wicked spirit. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) The opening stanza is one long introductory sentence, pre- 
paring us for the reminiscence of an incident in the man's boyhood 
experiences. See lines 18 to 22 for the main predication. The full 
import of the material in this introduction cannot be appreciated 
until the end of the poem is reached. The boyhood reminiscence 
begins at line 23, and extends to the close, but the recital is inter- 
spersed with the later experiences and thoughts of the man. Relate 
the incident in its simple outline. (2) What do you think of the 
metaphors in lines i and 2? If you have ever seen the ocean rocking 
or heard the mocking-bird singing, you can all the better understand 
the figures. (3) At what time of year does the man go back to the 
scene of his boyhood experience (see line 3)? Connect this with the 



540 American Literary Readings 

time of year of the boy's experience (line 24). (4) What is the func- 
tion of the bird's love song, lines 32-40? (Suggestion: Compare this 
song with the bird's later songs and the answer will be evident.) (5) 
Why is the bird's call (line 52-54) made so short? Do you know the 
mocking-bird's call to its mate as distinguished from its imitative 
song? Look up a good bird book or encyclopedia on this point. (6) 
Study carefully the bird's grief song. Notice how it opens with 
"Soothe! soothe! soothe!" as an onomatopoetic bird note, as well as 
a suggestion of the regular flow of the waves. Point out the different 
natural objects in which the bird looks for his mate. Notice, too, 
how the grief rises and falls and grows more intense toward the close 
when all hope of recovering his mate seems gone. How does the 
last line (129) echo the burden of the love song (lines 35 and 40), and 
what is the effect of this? (7) What was the effect of the song on the 
boy's heart? (See note on line 143.) (8) Explain what is meant by 
the trio. (See note on line 140.) (9) Do you think fierce, or savage, 
old mother is a good synonym for the sea? Why? (10) What is the 
"drown'd secret" (line 142) which the ocean hisses? Why is it not 
revealed just yet? Is hissing (142 and 170) a good word to use in this 
connection? (11) How does the poet gradually lead up to the dis- 
closure of the one word, the power which sublimates and equalizes 
all things (see lines 158 to 168)? Whitman is undoubtedly the poet 
who has best sung the mysterious beauty of death. Death is the 
central and culminating point in his whole philosophy and the gate 
to a sure immortality. (12) Read the introductory and concluding 
stanzas together and point out all similarities and echo phrases, and 
comment on the artistic effect of this device. (13) Study the peculiar 
rhythmic chant or monotone of the body of the poem, and note the 
variety of phrasal grouping in the lines. Note also how the songs 
are given a distinct lyrical impulse and tone without the ordinary 
conventions of rime, regular stanza, and ordered meter and rhythm. 
(14) Memorize the first bird song (lines 32-40). 

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (Whitman) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This threnody and the following grief lyric, "O Captain! My 
Captain!" are the first two of four poems called "Memorials of 
President Lincoln" in the final edition of Leaves of Grass. They were 
written in 1865 shortly after Lincoln's death by assassination, April 
14-15, 1865, included in a supplemental volume called Sequel to Drum- 
Taps (1865), and afterwards bound up with some of the remaining 
unbound copies of Drum-Taps, which was just going through the press 
when the tragedy occurred. Whitman was at his home in Brooklyn 
with his mother when the news reached him. He thus records the ex- 
perience of April 15, 1865: "Mother prepared breakfast — and other 
meals afterwards — as usual; but not a mouthful was eaten all day by 
either of us. We each drank half a cup of coffee; that was all. Little 
was said. We got every newspaper morning and evening, and the 
frequent extras of that period, and pass'd them silently to each other." 
In Specimen Days, p. 68, under date of April 16, 1865, is given 
Whitman's estimate of Lincoln: "He leaves for America's history and 
biography, so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence — he leaves, 
in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral 



The Notes 541 

personality. Not but that he had faults, and show'd them in the 
presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience, and (a 
new virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really known 
here, but the foundation tie of all, as the future will grandly develop) 
Unionism, in its truest and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his 
character. These he seal'd with his life. The tragic splendor of his 
death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an 
aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, while 
history lives and love of country lasts." 

The lilacs were in bloom in Brooklyn, and the odor of this favorite 
flower was naturally associated in the poet's mind with the death of 
the great President. Whitman had never been personally introduced 
to President Lincoln, but while he was working in the hospitals at 
Washington he had frequently seen the President going on his rides, 
and had recorded in his notes his impressions of the man. Lincoln, 
too, knew Whitman at sight and now and then exchanged cordial bows 
with him. On the occasion of Whitman's being pointed out to him, 
Lincoln remarked with peculiar emphasis on his words, "Well, /le looks 
like a man." 

These two poems of Whitman's are undoubtedly the finest poetical 
tribute paid to the martyred president. "O Captain! My Captain!" is 
better known perhaps, because it is briefer and because it is written in 
the regular technical form of lyric verse. But the threnody, "When 
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," written in Whitman's char- 
acteristic recitative, or free verse, with the fine lyric interlude of the 
song of the hermit thrush, is the greater poem and certainly reaches 
the high-water mark of Whitman's genius. Swinburne in a character- 
istic outburst of early enthusiasm said that it was "the most sonorous 
anthem ever chanted in the church of the world." 

EXPLANATORY: 

87: I. lilacs. The lilac was a favorite flower with Whitman. 
At the old family homestead on Long Island there grew great clusters 
of these beautiful and fragrant blossoms. At Brooklyn, where Whitman 
was when he heard of the death of Lincoln, there were many yards 
with lilac borders, but in imagination the poet has associated the 
scene of his dirge with its threefold symbol, the lilac, the star, and 
the bird, around the old homestead at West Hills. 

87 : 2. great star. Venus, the brightest of the planets, is seen 
low in the west in the spring. Whitman seems to identify the star 
with Lincoln, the sinking of the star into darkness representing 
Lincoln's death. 

87 : 9. murk. An archaic word meaning darkness. What does 
it typify if Lincoln is the sinking star? (See the preceding note.) 

87: 20-21. the thrush, The hermit. The North American hermit 
thrush, a shy and retiring bird with olive-brownish plumage, is a 
beautiful singer. 

88 : 32. Night and day journeys a coffin. Lincoln's body was 
carried to Springfield, Illinois, for burial. On its journey of two 
thousand miles, throngs of people assembled all along the way to do 
honor to the dead president. 

89 : 55. western orb. The evening star. 

89 : 56. a month since I ivalk'd. This probably refers to a real 
incident recorded in Specimen Days (p. 43): "I see the President 



542 American Literary Readings , 

almost every day, as I happen to live where he passes to or from his 
lodgings out of town. He never sleeps at the White House during 
the hot season, but has quarters at a healthy location some three 
miles north, the Soldiers' Home, a United States military establish- 
ment ... I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, 
with the deep-cut lines, the eyes, always to me, with a deep latent 
sadness in the expression . . . They pass'd me once very close, and 
I saw the President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and 
his look, though abstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my 
eye. He bow'd and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well 
the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has 
caught the deep, though subtle and indirect, expression of this man's 
face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait 
painters of two or three centuries ago is needed." 

90 : 67. singer bashful and tender. The poet here reverts to the 
thrush to keep the reader from forgetting the bird which is later to 
sing the "Death Carol." 

90 : 78. what shall I hang on the chamber walls? It was custom- 
ary in ancient times to hang votive emblems on the walls of the 
temples in honor of victory, dead heroes, etc. Whitman has here 
adapted this custom to his purposes in introducing the decorations 
for Lincoln's tomb. 

90: 82. Fourth-month. April. See " Out of the Cradle Endlessly 
Rocking" (lines 3 and 24). 

91 : 90. Manhattan. New York City, the heart of which is located 
on Manhattan Island. Whitman called this his city, and practically 
always used some form of the old Indian name to designate it. 

93 : 134. tallied the song of the bird. Tally means to score with 
corresponding notches on two sticks; hence the meaning here is that 
the poet's soul echoed the song of the bird word for word. Whitman 
was very fond of this expression. See lines 163, 187, 200 below. 

95 : 204. the sweetest, wisest soul. See introductory note, quo- 
tations from Specimen Days (p. 68). 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Try to put yourself in the proper mood for reading this great 
poem on death. Recall all you know and think and feel regarding 
Abraham Lincoln, and try to imagine how his tragic death affected 
the nation, and especially Walt Whitman, the poet whose love for 
democratic America was all-encompassing. Recall the form, color, 
and odor of lilacs, and associate this flower with Lincoln's death as 
Whitman did. Then imagine the poet sitting on the veranda of his 
ancestral farm home, beside the door of which the lilacs were blooming, 
looking out over the west just as night came on and the beautiful 
evening star was slowly sinking behind the horizon and the solitary 
hermit thrush was soulfully singing in the dark swamp. These three 
objects become the motifs or lyrical symbols of the hymn. Now 
begin to read in a slow", solemn tone, thinking soberly and deeply as 
you read, following the poet in his imaginative flights and re-creating 
his mood from stanza to stanza as nearly as you can. (2) After you 
have read the poem straight through in this way, go back and study 
its structure. Notice the ode form in which this threnody, or dirge, 
is written. The stanzas vary in length as the intensity of the emotion 
increases or subsides. Note how skillfully the three concrete symbols 



The Notes 543 

are woven together for a unified final eflfect. Point out some of the 
most intense passages, and indicate some of the places where the poet 
consciously injects one or the other of the three symbols just to keep 
them all before the reader's mind. Now, take up the poem in detail. 
The following questions will aid you in this study. (3) What two 
concrete images are associated with the poet's grief in the first sta-nza? 
(4) Why is the second stanza written in such broken, exclamatory 
style? (5) How does the tone change in the third stanza? (6) To, 
what single object is the third stanza devoted, and why? (7) What 
third motif, or symbol, is introduced in the fourth stanza? Why is 
the song spoken of as from a "bleeding throat"? Why is it called 
"Death's outlet song of life"? (8) What procession does the poet 
have in mind in the fifth stanza? Is the railroad journey clearly 
presented to your mind? What elements of beauty enter the de- 
scription? (9) What picture is presented in the sixth stanza? How 
are the third and sixth stanzas united? (10) In the seventh stanza, 
which is parenthetical, how does the poet broaden the theme so as to 
make a universal application of the specific instance? (11) To what 
symbol does the poet revert in the eighth stanza? Do you think 
Lincoln himself might be the star that was so full of sorrow (see note 
on line 56)? (12) Why does the poet stop to mention the bird again 
in stanza 9? Where does he next introduce the bird, and for what 
purpose? At what point in the progress of the poem is the bird's 
carol introduced? Has this climax been carefully prepared for? 
(13) What beautiful new thought is given in the tenth stanza? (14) 
Give the decorative pictures as presented in stanza 11. (15) In 
stanza 12 the poet offers the whole of America, body and soul, city 
and country, as a decorative tribute for the dead President's tomb. 
How does he manage to encompass in brief space the whole land with 
all its sections? (16) What is the function of stanza 13? (Note 
how all three symbols are united here.) (17) How does stanza 14 
summarize and enrich the picture, and at the same time present a 
new and startling imaginative vision? What is the distinction you 
would make between the companions that hold the poet by either 
hand? (18) What do you think of the bird's carol on death? Why 
is it called a carol instead of a lament? Did you ever think of death 
as an object of praise and glorification and joyous thanksgiving? Is 
it the bird or Whitman's soul that really sings this carol? How 
does the poet indicate that his soul responds to every word that the 
bird sings? (19) What visions did the song of the bird bring to the 
poet (stanza 15), and what new thought came to him about the dead? 
(20) How does he dismiss and yet retain in his mind all the symbols 
and companions his grief-stricken imagination has conjured up? 
Quote from memory the last four lines of the poem. (21) Do you 
notice how the song of the bird and the scenes of nature have softened 
and quieted the poet's grief? Quote a passage from Bryant in this 
connection. (22) What peculiarities of style do you find in this poem? 
Is the punctuation always conventional? Are the sentences always 
complete; that is, do they always have the predicate and subject fully 
stated? Are Whitman's rhythmic chants like anything else you have 
read in this book? (23) Suggestions for compositions: Whitman's 
Portrayal of Nature; Whitman, the Poet of Democracy; Why I Think 
Whitman is (or is not) the Greatest American Poet; Walt Whitman 
and Abraham Lincoln. 



544 American Literary Readings 

O Captain! My Captain! (Whitman) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

See the introductory note to "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard 
Bloom'd," p. 540. 

EXPLANATORY: 

96: 2. rack. Storm, shipwreck; cognate with wrack, an obsolete 
form of wreck. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Under what figure does Whitman conceive the Union and at 
what critical moment in our history? Who is the Captain? (2) What 
is the meaning of "the prize we sought is won"? Do you catch the 
full vision of the grand old ship coming into the harbor of peace after 
the great Civil War? (3) Give the circumstances of Lincoln's death. 
Does the image of the Captain fallen on the deck in his own blood fit 
the facts? (4) Why does Whitman call Lincoln "dear father" (lines 
3 and 8)? (5) What is the meaning of the bells, flags, etc., as indicated 
in stanza 2? In what respect does the tone of this stanza differ from 
the tone of the next stanza? (6) How are the two notes of rejoicing 
and sorrow mingled in the final stanza? (7) Study the form of this 
lyric, noting that it has regular iambic rhythm, rime, and refrain, 
and is similar to conventional lyrics and entirely different from most 
of Whitman's poetry. Point out one example of rime within the 
line and one faulty end rime. (8) Compare this poem with the closing 
lines of Longfellow's "The Building of the Ship," beginning "Thou too 
sail on, O Ship of State." 

The Mystic Trumpeter (Whitman) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This noble chant was first published in 1872 with the poem "As a 
Strong Bird on Pinions Free," which had been recited by the poet 
at the Commencement celebration of Dartmouth College that year. 

EXPLANATORY: 

97. The Mystic Trumpeter. This shadowy musician is symbolic 
of the poet's ideal or creative imagination; and by identifying himself 
with the trumpeter, Whitman partially expresses his own poetic 
creed and what he hoped to effect by his poetry. 

97 : 24. troubadours. The medieval poets of certain parts of 
France, Spain, and Italy who sang principally of love and war. 

98 : 25. holy Graal. The Holy Grail. See the note on Lowell's 
"Vision of Sir Launfal," p. 599. 

98 : 36. alembic. A glass distilling vessel. Expound the figura- 
tive use here. 

100 : 71. bacchanals. Devotees of Bacchus, the god of wine 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Show how the poet first hears, then invokes, the mystic trum- 
peter (stanzas i and 2). (2) Just what is typified in this mysterious 
musician? (3) What is the first effect of the trumpet's free, clear note 
on the poet (stanza 3)? (4) What theme is developed in the fourth 



The Notes 545 

stanza? Does this stanza summarize for you all that you have ever 
read of the feudal ages? (5) Why does the chant become more intense 
and more emotional in the fifth stanza? (6) What is the subject of 
the sixth stanza? (7) What thoughts seem to oppress the poet's 
spirit in the seventh stanza? Is it true that at times the whole world 
seems going wrong? (8) What striking contrast to stanza 7 is devel- 
oped in stanza 8? Does this seem to indicate Whitman's funda- 
mental optimism? In this final stanza Whitman sketches the ideal 
toward which he believed democratic America was tending. (9) Does 
this poem read more easily and naturally than the preceding long poems 
by Whitman? What is the chief difference in style between this and 
the other poems you have read? (10) Compare this poem with 
Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," and determine which of the two you 
think is the finer poetical production. 

Heroism (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Emerson delivered a lecture on heroism in Boston during the 
winter of 1 837-1 838. This essay is probably a revision of that lecture. 
It occurs in the Essays, First Series, published in 1841. Only the 
quotation from Mahomet appeared as a motto heading in the first 
edition, but in later editions the additional lines composed by Emerson 
to fit the thought of the essay were inserted. Read these mottoes 
carefully; notice how admirably they suggest and summarize the 
thought of the essay. 

EXPLANATORY: 

106 : 15. Rodrigo, Pedro or Valerio. Names of characters in 
several plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, English dramatists of the 
time of Shakespeare. 

106 : 21. Bonduca, Sophocles, etc. Names of plays by Beaumont 
and Fletcher. Sophocles is really not a play but the name of a promi- 
nent character in the Triumph of Honor, one of four short plays or 
"triumphs" included under the title Four Plays in One. The long 
quotation just below is taken from Scene i of the Triumph of Honor. 

107 : 34. Ariadne's crown. A constellation. Look up the whole 
beautiful story of Ariadne in classic mythology and report on it in 
class. 

107 : 58. Strike, strike, Valerius. That is, lower your weapon, 
stop the punishment of Sophocles and Dorigen. 

107: 82. flutes . . . fife. The flute is typical of soft, voluptuous 
music; the fife of vigorous, martial, heroic strains. 

108 : 86. Lord Evandale. In chapter 42 of Scott's Old Mortality 
Burley's characterization of Lord Evandale may be found. 

108: 91. a song or two. Such perhaps as "Scots Wha Ha' wi' 
Wallace Bled" and "A Man's a Man for a' That." 

108: 91. Harleian Miscellanies. Robert Harley, first Earl of 
Oxford (1661-1724), collected many rare books and pamphlets. These 
are now to be found in the library at Oxford University. In Vol. IV, 
p. 197, of the published series (1808) there is a spirited account of the 
battle of Liitzen (1632) between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 
and Wallenstein, the great general fighting under Ferdinand II, King 



546 American Literary Readings 

V 

of Bohemia. Gustavus Adolphus won a great victory but lost his life. 
io8 : 93. Simon Ockley. English Arabic scholar and historian; 
died 1720. 

108 : 98. Plutarch. A Greek historian of the first century who 
wrote the lives of many ancient heroes, statesmen, and philosophers. 
Some of them are named in the text. Read several of these heroic 
biographies, and see if you do not become interested enough to read 
more of the "Lives." 

108: 117. insanity that makes him eat grass. See the story of 
King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:33. 

109 : 141. hero is a mind. That is, he possesses a mind, etc. 
109 : 150. Heroism feels and never reasons. Emerson believed 

more in intuitive insight into truth than in the products of the logical 
or reasoning faculties. 

no: 182. Plotinus. A Greco-Egyptian philosopher of the third 
century who exalted the ideal or spiritual to the neglect of the physical 
or materialistic. 

no: 184. cats' -cradles. A child's game made by looping a string 
over the fingers so as to form imitative figures. Compare Job's coflfin, 
crow's feet, etc. 

no: 189. the great hoax. That is, the world, life. Compare 
this passage with Shakespeare's "seven ages of man," As You Like 
It, II: vii. 

Ill : 195. "Indeed ..." The quotation is from Henry IV, 
Part II, II: ii. See also Hotspur's famous speech in Henry IV, Part 
I, I: iii, in which he flays "a certain lord," a "popinjay," who came 
to demand prisoners of him. 

Ill : 207. Ibn Haukal. An Arabian geographer; died 976. 
Emerson must have read the account in Sir William Ouseley's trans- 
lation, "The Oriental Geography of Ibn Haukul" (1800). This 
illustrates Emerson's habit of using unusual and obscure allusions. 

111 : 220. put God under obligation. The same idea is expressed 
in the essay on Compensation, p. 134, "Put God in your debt." 

112 : 229. bafitiocks. Coarse barley or oatmeal griddle cakes 
used by the peasants in northern England and Scotland. 

112 : 238. John Eliot (1604-1690). The Apostle to the Indians. 
He lived among the Indians, teaching and preaching to them. He 
translated the Bible into the Indian language. 

112 : 242. King David. Repeat the story as told in I Chronicles 
11: 15-19. 

112 : 245. Brutus. Marcus Junius Brutus (85-42 B.C.), the friend 
and one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Efforts to locate the source 
of Emerson's information concerning the story that Brutus thus quotes 
this line have been unsuccessful. Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, follow- 
ing Plutarch's "Life," makes Brutus say, 

"My heart doth joy that yet in all my life 

I found no man but he was true to me. 

I shall have glory by this losing day 

More than Octavius and Mark Antony 

By this vile conquest shall attain unto." — V: v. 

112 : 260. Scipio. The Roman general who destroyed Carthage, 

146 B.C. 

113 : 264. Socrates. A celebrated Greek philosopher; died 390 B.C. 
The Pryteneum was a palace where distinguished^guests were entertained 



The Notes 547 

by the state free of charge. Socrates playfully declared that he ought 
to be entertained there for life. 

113 : 265. Sir Thomas More. An English nobleman who was 
beheaded as a traitor in 1535 in the reign of Henry VIII. It is said 
that when he mounted the scaffold he asked a friend to help him up, 
and then remarked, "When I come down, I can shift for myself." 
He is the author of the famous Latin romance Utopia. 

113 : 269. The quotation is from The Sea Voyage, IV: iii. 

113 : 280. Blue-Laws. In the early colonial governments, par- 
ticularly in New Haven, Connecticut, the laws were very strict and 
puritanical in character. Hence any harsh, restraining law is called 
a blue law. 

1 14 : 309. That country is the fairest which is inhabited by the noblest 
minds. Compare with Ruskin's saying, "That country is richest 
which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings." 

114: 312. Pericles, etc. Pericles (died 429 B.C.), Greek states- 
man; Xenophon (died 357), Greek historian; Columbus (died 1506), 
Spanish explorer, discovered America, 1492; Bayard, Chevalier de 
(died 1524), French hero, the knight sans peur et sans reproche, "with- 
out fear and without reproach"; Sidney, Sir Philip (died 1586), an 
English nobleman, soldier, and author; or perhaps Emerson had in 
mind Algernon Charles Sidney (died 1683)., an English patriot executed 
for alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot. Hampden, John 
(died 1643), English statesman, opposed ship tax of Charles I. AH 
these men suffered reverses and exhibited notable traits of heroism 
and unselfishness in their troubles. 

114 • 333- Sappho, or Sevigne, or De Sta'el. Three notable women, 
the first a lyric poet of ancient Greece, the second and third noted 
French writers and clever conversationalists. 

115 • 336- Themis. The wife of Zeus; she was the goddess of 
law and order and absolute right. Note the appropriateness of this 
appeal to a female goddess. 

115- 339- Let the maiden ... to end of paragraph. This 
passage is worth committing to memory. 

115' 365. "Always do," etc. This advice is said to have been 
given to Emerson by his eccentric but strong-minded aunt. Miss Mary 
Moody Emerson. Do you think it is good advice? Why? 

115: 368. Phocion. A noted Athenian aristocrat, statesman, and 
soldier; died 317 B.C. He opposed the policy of Demosthenes in regard 
to the war against Philip of Macedon, preferring instead to make peace. 

116: 384. asceticism. The doctrine of extreme self-denial, absti- 
nence, austerity, and the like, in order to gain perfection of character. 

117 : 404. Lovejoy. In 1837 the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, a 
Presbyterian minister, was killed by a mob in Alton, Illinois, for 
persistence in his right to publish freely his articles against negro 
slavery. Note how strongly Emerson voices his own feelings 
through this example. If possible, read the full account of Lovejoy's 
martyrdom in the Centenary Edition of Emerson's works. Vol. II, 
p. 424. 

117: 410. stablish. EstabUsh. The old form occurs frequently 
in the King James Version of the Bible. Does Emerson gain anything 
by choosing this archaic form of the word? 

117 : 426. "Let them rave." Imperfectly quoted from one of 
Tennyson's early poems, "A Dirge." 



548 American Literary Readings 

117 : 438. conversation. Here used in the sense of intercourse, 
•association, connection. 

117 : 439. sooner than treacherous. That is, the love that will be 
annihilated sooner than it will prove to be treacherous, etc. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(l) Test by your own reading the following outline by paragraphs: 
I . The heroic in early English dramatic literature. 2. Modern literature 
has some touches of the heroic, but Plutarch is the great source book of 
heroism. 3. Need for such examples. 4. Education must forewarn 
and arm the youth so as to prepare him for life's warfare. 5. Defini- 
tion of heroism; how it expresses itself in its rudest forms. 6. Heroism 
cuts across accepted ideas of prudence and conventional life and proves 
its right to do so. 7. Heroism trusts itself and despises the little, 
piddling, prudent care of the body. 8. Heroism does not count the 
cost of hospitality, but is magnanimous. 9. The hero is temperate 
and never demands luxuries for himself. 10. The heroic soul clings to 
virtue; yields not to personal ease and comfort. 11. Above all the hero 
is good-humored and sportive even amid the hardships and crises of 
life. 12. The perennial interest in heroes and heroic literature is due 
to the fact that, no matter what our circumstances may be, we are 
capable of becoming heroic and' appropriating the hero's virtues in 
our own lives. 13. The aspiration of youth, even though it may 
never ripen, springs from the heroic instinct and is its own reward. 
14. Heroism is consistently persistent even when the outcome seems 
contradictory. 15. The heroic soul never worries over apparent 
blunders or indiscretions. 16. The fortunate should subject them- 
selves to some form of asceticism in order to develop heroic qualities. 

17. All ages, even the most prosaic, offer opportunities to test heroism. 

18. Trust yourself; prepare for the personal heroic crisis, for whatever 
has happened to men may happen again. 19. The hero can rest peace- 
fully when he has done his best according to the light that is in him. 
(2) Does Emerson stick to his subject throughout the essay? Can 
you see any regular plan or orderliness in the development of the 
theme? If so, make some larger headings covering groups of paragraphs. 
[Suggestion: Introductory thoughts on heroism (paragraphs 1-4); 
definition and specific qualities of heroism (paragraphs 5-1 1) ; some evi- 
dences of the heroic spirit in everyday life (paragraphs 12-19)]. (3) In 
paragraph i, what is the function of sentences i and 2, which speak 
of gentility in the older English dramatists? What is the main topic of 
this paragraph? Do you think the long quotation justifies Emerson's 
high opinion of its heroic quality? What does Dorigen mean by "With 
this tie up my sight"? What does iVIartius mean by saying his heart 
will leap out of his mouth? (4) Have you read any of the modern 
literature referred to in paragraph 2? If so, how well do you think 
the examples are chosen? If not, read one or two of the specimens 
and make your decision as to their fitness in illustrating the point. 
(5) Look up the meaning of stoicism (paragraph 2), cathartic (paragraph 
3), urbanity (paragraph 4). Write out the definitions of these and 
seven other words of your own selection in this essay, giving the 
special sense in which each is used in the text. (6) Explain the 
fitness of the examples of good humor and hilarity in paragraph 9. 
(7) Exactly what is meant by "Let us find room for this guest in 
our small houses, " paragraph 12? (8) Work out carefully the 



The Notes 549 

thought of the beautiful final sentence of the essay. Does Emerson 
believe in immortahty? (9) Select and memorize one good passage 
from each of the following paragraphs: 12, 13, 14, 17, 19. 

Compensation (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Whether this essay was first delivered as a lecture is now a matter 
of conjecture, but there is no doubt that Emerson was early impressed 
with the universal application of the law of compensation, and he 
probably introduced into his first lectures some of the ideas now 
incorporated in the essay. In June, 1831, he wrote in his Journal a 
considerable note on compensation, among other things saying, "Is 
not the law of Compensation perfect? It holds, as far as we can see, 
different gifts to different individuals, but with a mortgage of respon- 
sibility on every one ... I have nothing charactered on my brain 
that outlives this word Compensation." The essay was published in 
Essays, First Series, 1841, and it has since held the foremost or very 
nearly the foremost place in popularity among all Emerson's essays. 

EXPLANATORY: 

118: 8. Electric star and pencil. Probably refers to comets and 
shooting stars. 

118: II. makeweight. An insignificant weight or bit of matter 
used to make up a true balance. 

118: 18. None from its stock that vine can reave. That is, the 
vine cannot take away anything from the tree on which it grows. 

118: 20. There's no god . . . What is the meaning of this 
line? Note the striking paradox. 

120: 1 01. the following chapter. The next essay — namely, on 
"Spiritual Laws." .> 

120 : 105. Polarity. The quality of possessing opposite poles or 
contrasted characteristics. This is the keyword to the body of the 
essay. Notice the emphatic position in which it is placed in the 
paragraph. 

120: no. systole and diastole. Systole is the contraction of the 
heart which drives the blood outward; diastole is the expansion which 
draws the blood inward. 

122: 163. intenerate. Make tender or soft ; from Latin iewer, tender. 

123 : 177. hear witness to the light. A reminiscence of John 1:7. 
Similarly "hate father and mother," in the next sentence, is an adapta- 
tion of Luke 14:26. 

123 : 186. Res nolunt, etc. Translated in the preceding sentence 
of the text. 

123 : 218. The world globes itself in a drop of dew. In what sense? 

124 : 229. Thus is the universe alive. Emerson believed in a 
universal soul, a world soul, and an individual soul of man, all as 
parts of one great soul system. Read the essay on "The Oversoul." 

124 : 232. "// is in the world," etc. A reminiscence of John i : 10. 

124 : 235. The dice of God, etc. A translation of the preceding 
quotation from the Greek. 

125 : 272. soul says, 'Eat'; the body would feast. See the parable 
of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21), "Eat, drink, and be merry." 

125 : 273. one flesh. "And Adam said: This is bone of my bone 



550 American Literary Readings 

and flesh of my flesh ; she shall be called woman . . . and they shall 
be one flesh" (Genesis 2:23, 24). 

125: 275. dominion over all things. See Genesis 1:26. 

125: 278. All things shall be added unto it. "Seek ye first the 
Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be 
added unto you" (Matthew 6:33). 

125 : 281. truck and higgle. To barter and contend over a bargain. 
126: 295. "Drive out Nature," etc. An old Latin saying quoted 

by Horace in the first of his Epistles. 

126: 314. "How secret," etc. From the Confessions of Saint 
Augustine. 

126 : 324. Prometheus. Look up the story of Prometheus and the 
other classical allusions in this paragraph. Prometheus knew how 
Jupiter was to be overthrown. 

126: 328. "Of all the gods," etc. Translated from a speech by 
Athena, or Minerva, in the Eumenides ("Furies"), a drama by Aeschy- 
lus. Emerson quotes from R. Potter's poetical translation, London, 
1779, Vol. II, p. 288. 

127 : 331. A plain confession. The verb is omitted. Supply it. 
127 : 338. Siegfried. Hero of the German epic "Niebelungenlied." 
127 : 348. Nemesis. The goddess of retribution. The other 

allusions in this paragraph may be verified in a classic mythology. 
127 : 354. belt which Ajax gave Hector, etc. After a personal 
combat Ajax and Hector exchanged arms; later Ajax committed 
suicide with Hector's sword; and when Achilles killed Hector and 
dragged his body around Troy, he used the belt of Ajax to fasten 
Hector's body to his chariot. See the Iliad for fuller details. 

127 : 358. Theagenes. This explains how a wall (line 352) may 
punish a wrong, just as the sword and belt had done in the instances 
mentioned above. 

128 : 369. Phidias. The greatest of Greek sculptors; died 432 B.C. 

129 : 424. vulgar. Common; from the Latin vulgus, the. common 
people. 

130 : 446. obscene bird. That is, the carrion crow Fear. Obscene 
is here used in the original Latin sense of ill-omened. 

130 : 450. emerald of Polycrates. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, 
was so fortunate that he was warned that he must suffer some loss or 
injury, or else he would incur the envy of the gods and receive severe 
punishment. He threw into the sea an emerald ring, one of his most 
cherished treasures, but in a little while it was found in the stomach 
of a fish and restored to him. The story goes that shortly afterwards 
Polycrates was taken by his enemies and crucified. 

130 : 452. noble asceticism and vicarious virtue. Noble asceticism 
means the noble desire to suppress or sacrifice one's self for the soul's 
good; vicarious virtue means the substitution of another's virtue for 
our own, as when we say Christ's virtue is a substitute for our sins. 

130 : 456. scot and lot. In old English law, a tax levied according 
to one's ability to pay. The sense here is, to pay up fully all one's 
obligations or debts. Read in this connection what is said in the next 
paragraph, "Always pay," etc. 

131 '• 507- his honest care. What is the antecedent of his? The 
antecedent really follows rather than precedes in this case. 

132 : 518. leger. An archaic form of ledger. 

132 : 542. Love, and you shall be loved. In form this sentence 



The Notes 551 

echoes Matthew 7:7, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you 
shall find," etc. 

133 : 550- Wifids blow, etc. Quoted from Wordsworth's sonnet 
beginning "Inland, within a hollow vale I stood." 

133 • 554- As no man had ever a point of pride, etc. See the quota- 
tion from Burke in paragraph 28. 

134 : 580. cicatrizes. Forms a scar. 

134 : 602. Put God in your debt. The same thought occurs in the 
essay on "Heroism." Locate it. 

134: 610. traversing its work. That is, contradicting reason's work. 

136 : 670. His life. That is, the upright or virtuous life. 
137: 7Q5- I ammy brother. A reminiscence of "Am I my brother's 

keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). 

137 • 715- '^^^- Used in the sense of knowledge, insight. 

137 : 722. as the shell-fish crawls out. Compare the thought with 
that of Holmes's "Chambered Nautilus," p. 318. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

General, (i) What general idea does JEmerson develop in the 
Introduction, paragraphs i to 6? (2) Do you agree with the preacher 
(paragraph 2) or with Emerson (paragraph 4) in regard to true success? 
(3) What is the main teaching of the body of the essay as indicated 
in paragraph 7? (4) Take the following suggestions and make a 
complete outHne of the essay, condensing and restating where possible, 
and indicating the number of paragraphs in each division; then fill 
in the subdivisions by giving the paragraph topics: I. Reasons for 
the desirability of writing on the law of compensation. II. The law 
of polarity or dualism exists in all nature (a) as seen in the material 
world; (b) as seen in the moral and spiritual world; (c) as seen in the 
records of literature and art; (d) as applied to practical life; (e) as 
applied to labor; (/) as applied to virtue and vice; (g) as applied to 
the nature of the soul; (h) as seen in the calamities of life. (5) Is the 
evolution of the thought of the essay as indicated in the foregoing out- 
line logical and effective? Are the relations between the parts perfectly 
evident, or do you have some trouble in coordinating the various 
thought units? (6) Do you think Emerson paid a great deal of 
attention to the sequence and arrangement of his paragraphs? Of his 
sentences or thought units within the paragraph? What effect kas • 
his habit on the reader's attention? (7) Does Emerson appeal to our 
logical faculties or largely to our emotional and imaginative faculties? 
Is he convincing? Inspiring? (8) What did you think of this essay 
as a whole when you first read it? What do you think of it after study- 
ing it more closely? (9) Compare the structure and style of this 
essay with the structure and style of the essay on "Heroism." 

Specific, (i) What thought does the first headpiece or motto 
express? The second? Are the mottoes appropriate for this essay? 
(2) What is the relation between paragraphs 2 and 3? 2 and 4? 5 
and I? (3) What is the function of the short paragraph 6? What 
was Emerson's real purpose in writing the essay? (4) Point out 
examples of concrete rather than general terms in paragraphs 3, 9, 14. 
Note other examples throughout the essay. (5) Explain "If riches 
increase, they are increased that use them," and "Nature takes out of 
the man what she puts into his chest," in paragraph 10. (6) Have 



552 American Literary Readings 

you known or read of instances which illustrate the thought of the 
latter part of paragraph lo? What about Silas Marner? (7) "Eyes, 
ears ... all find room to consist in the small creature," paragraph 
14; is this literally true? (8) In what sense is the King of England 
helpless (paragraph 21)? (9) Are the figures and illustration in para- 
graph 27 effective? Why? (10) Explain why the proverb " I will get 
it from his purse or get it from his skin," paragraph 28, is sound phi- 
losophy. Read paragraph 29 in this connection. (11) Prove from 
your own experience the truth expressed in paragraph 29. (12) "Our 
property is timid," etc., paragraph 30. Why? (13) Explain the 
thought of paragraph 31. Look up the notes on this paragraph. 
(14) Illustrate from your own experience or observation the sayings 
in paragraph 32, "He had better haVe broken his own bones than to 
have ridden in his neighbor's coach," and "The highest price he can 
pay for a thing is to ask for it." (15) Make a practical application to 
your school work of the thought in the last sentence of paragraph 34. 
(16) Does Emerson mean to teach that a man is better for his faults 
or merely that a man's faults may at times be of distinct advantage 
to him? (17) Why is it wise to throw one's self on the side of one's 
assailants (paragraph 39)? (18) Who is the "third silent party to all 
our bargains" (paragraph 40)? (19) "If you serve an ungrateful 
master, serve him the more" (paragraph 40). If you had a hard 
teacher or one whom you did not like, would it be wise to refuse to 
do your best work for him? Why? (20) What is Emerson's defini- 
tion of a mob (paragraph 41)? Why is it a good one? (21) In con- 
nection with paragraph 41 read paragraph 17 of the essay on Heroism 
and the note on Alexander Lovejoy (p. 523) as an example of mob 
violence. Can you give other examples? (22) Is the doctrine of 
compensation fatalistic, that is, does it free us from the duty of 
attempting to do something worth while in life? (Read paragraph 42, 
and note the discussion of the nature of the soul which immediately 
foUows.) (23) Can you really understand all that is said in paragraph 
43? Try to express the thought in your own words. (24) Why is 
the criminal always punished, even though we do not see any "stun- 
ning confutation" (paragraph 44) of his deeds? (25) -Most children 
wish to find a pot of gold. Why does Emerson say he no longer 
wishes to do this (paragraph 46)? (26) "I am my brother and my 
brother is me" (paragraph 47). What Bible story does this suggest? 
(27) In what sense are Jesus and Shakespeare fragments of the soul? 
"His virtue . . . his wit"; whose virtue and whose wit (paragraph 
47)? (28) Under what conditions may we make absolute gain with- 
out suffering loss (paragraphs 45 and 46)? Can you give examples 
from your own experience when calamities have strengthened and 
helped you in your development (paragraph 50)? (29) Locate in the 
text and memorize the following passages: i. "The world globes 
itself in a drop of dew." 2. "Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected 
ripens within the flower of the pleasure whieh concealed it." 3. "You 
cannot do wrong without suffering wrong." 4. "He is base — and that 
is the one base thing in the universe — to receive favors and render 
none." 5. "The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles 
himself." 6. "Do the thing, and you shall have the power; but they 
who do not the thing have not the power." 7. "Commit a crime, 
and the earth is made of glass." 8. "Love, and ye shall be loved." 
9. "We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go 



The Notes 553 

out, that archangels may come in." lo. "The voice of the Almighty 
saith, 'Up and onward forevermore!'" (30) Select and copy five 
other passages which strike you as being especially good. (31) Select 
and copy six good figures of speech (see paragraphs i, 10, 15, 16, 27, 
30) and name each figure. (32) Note the short, snappy, epigrarn- 
matic predications in paragraphs 42 and 43. Is this a characteristic 
of Emerson's style? Point out similar examples in this essay and in 
the essay on Heroism. (34) What is Emerson's habit in regard to 
using quotations or references from the Bible? See paragraphs 11, 
15, 17, 18, etc., and the notes on these paragraphs. 



Concord Hymn (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

In the early editions of Emerson's poems the subtitle gives the 
date as April 19, 1836, but the monument was not completed and 
dedicated until July 4, 1837. (See Emerson's Works, Centenary 
Edition, Vol. IX, p. 454.) Emerson in the bi-centennial "Historical 
Address," September 12, 1835, gives full details of the battle and its 
significance. In this address he spoke of "the poor farmers who came 
up that day to defend their native soil." Emerson's grandfather, 
William Emerson, minister of Concord, watched the battle from his 
window in the Old Manse, and encouraged the "embattled farmers" 
to stand their ground. Says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Of all Emer- 
son's poems the 'Concord Hymn' is the most complete and faultless. 
. . . Compact, expressive, serene, solemn, musical, in four brief 
stanzas it tells the story of the past, records the commemorative act 
of the passing day, and invokes the higher power that governs the 
future to protect the memorial stone sacred to Freedom and her 
martyrs." 

EXPLANATORY: 

139: I. rude bridge. A rude wooden bridge spanned the river 
just where the battle was fought. The monument is placed within 
a few yards of this bridge. 

139: 2. April's breeze. The battle occurred April 19, 1775. 

139 : 8. creeps. The Concord River is a very sluggish stream at 
this point. 

139 : 10. votive stone. A stone set up in fulfillment of a vow. 
The first stanza of Emerson's " Hymn " is now engraved on one face of 
the monument. 

139: II. redeem. Here used in the sense of recall. • Why did 
Emerson use this word? 

139 : 13. Spirit. The spirit of liberty or freedom. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What kind of poem is this? (2) The first two stanzas give 
us what? The third stanza treats of what? To what does the poet 
appeal in the final stanza? (3) Give the story of the battle as recorded 
in your textbook on United States history. (Read "Paul Revere's 
Ride" in this connection.) Notice how perfectly the lyric motive 
of patriotic reverence and gratitude is embodied. (4) Which do you 



554 American Literary Readings 

think will be more enduring, Emerson's "Hymn" or the monument 
itself? (5) What is the exact meaning of flood in line i ? In what 
sense was "the shot heard round the world"? (6) In what rhythm 
and meter is the poem written? Notice in reading the lines rhythmi- 
cally that certain variations of the regular iambic measure occur here 
and there. In the first line the first foot {By the) is a pyrrhic, or 
two light syllables; but this is compensated for in the second foot 
{rude bridge) by a spondee, or two heavy, full syllables. In reading 
lines 6 and 1 1 , the words conqueror and memory should be compressed 
into two syllables instead of three. In line 13 the first foot {Spirit) 
is a trochee, and thus inversion of the regular iambic rhythm occurs 
in this instance. These variations are just frequent enough to avoid 
monotony of movement. (7) Memorize the poem. 

The Rhodora (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

In the third chapter of Nature (1836) Emerson said, "The world 
thus exists to the soul to satisfy the desire of beauty. This element 
I call an ultimate end. No reason can be asked or given why the 
soul seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest sense, is 
one expression of the universe. God is the all-fair. Truth and good- 
ness and beauty are but different faces of the same All." In a later 
essay on "The Poet" this same idea is advanced. "The world is not 
painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God 
has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the 
universe." "The Rhodora" is a poetic expression of this idea in concrete 
form. It was first published in 1839. 

EXPLANATORY: 

140 : 2. Rhodora. A handsome shrub of the genus Rhododendron; 
it bears beautiful clusters of purple flowers in early spring before its 
leaves appear. Read, if possible, John Fox, Jr.'s beautiful story, 
The Purple Rhododendron. 

140 : ID. This charm is wasted. Compare Gray's Elegy, 

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

140 : 12. Beauty is its own excuse for being. Compare Keats's 

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

— Ode on a Grecian Urn. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How is the lyric impulse, that is, the object of beauty which 
arouses the emotion, the flower, described in the first eight lines? 
Do you get a good mental picture? By what means? (2) What 
philosophical application or explanation is made in the last eight 
lines? (3) How does the flower "cheapen the array" of the redbird? 
(4) Read the quotation from Gray (note on line 10), and determine 
whether Emerson seems to agree with him that the sweetness or beauty 
of a flower can really be wasted. (5) In the last four lines the poet 
apostrophizes the flower. What is the lyric effect of this? (6) Mem- 
orize the whole poem, or at least the heart of it, lines 11 and 12. 



Notes 555 

The Humble-Bee (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem was written in May, 1837. In his Journal for May 9, 
Emerson wrote, "Yesterday in the woods I followed the humble-bee 
with rhymes and fancies fine." It was first published in 1839 in the 
Western Messenger, edited by Reverend James Freeman Clarke. In the 
letter accompanying the verses, Emerson wrote, "Here are the verses. 
They have pleased some cf my friends, and so may please some of 
your readers." Longfellow said that the poem contained "much 
of the quintessence of poetry." 

EXPLANATORY: 

140 : 3. Let them sail for Porto Rique. Let those who will sail 
for Porto Rico. Why is the name of the island slightly changed here? 

141 : 16. Epicurean. A follower of Epicurus (died 270 B.C.), a 
Greek philosopher who taught that men should seek the highest kinds 
of pleasure in life. Here accented Epicu'rean instead,of Epicure'an as 
ordinarily. Why? 

141 : 17. prithee. A shortened form of pray thee. 

141: 37. Indian wildernesses. The tropic regions of southern India. 

141 : 38. Syrian peace. Syria in Asia Minor is noted for its mild, 
enervating climate. 

141 : 38. immortal leisure. The gods on Mount Olympus are 
said to have immortal leisure. 

141 : 43. daffodels. Daffodils. Why is the form changed? 

141 : 45. succory. Same as chicory. It has large heads of blue 
flowers. 

142 : 60. Thou already slumherest. The humble-bee, or bumble-bee, 
hibernates, or lies dormant during the winter months. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How is the humble-bee characterized in the first stanza? In 
the second? (2) Select the most striking line in the first stanza; in 
the second. (3) What is the exact meaning of line 19? (4) In which 
stanza does the poet describe the time when the bee comes? (5) What 
is the effect on the poet of the drowsy hum of the insect (paragraph 
4)? (6) Name the kinds of flowers listed in paragraph 5. What 
lesson can we draw from this stanza? (7) What lesson is drawn in 
the final stanza? (8) With the foregoing questions as a guide, make 
an outline of the poem. (9) The meter is called trochaic tetrameter 
catalectic. See the discussion of English metrics, pp. 642-647, and 
explain just what this means. The rime is usually in couplets, and 
the number of couplets varies from stanza to stanza. What peculiar- 
ities of rime do you find in the first stanza? Why are the following 
lines especially musical: "Epicurean of June," "But violets and 
bilberry bells," "Columbine with horn of honey"? 

Days (Emerson) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem, though written several years earlier, appeared in the 
first number of the Atlantic Monthly, Nov^ember, 1857. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes in his Life 0/ Emerson calls attention to a prose passage in 



556 American Literary Readings 

Emerson's "Works and Days," which expresses the same thought as 
that in the poem: "The days are ever divine as to the first Aryans. 
They come and go Hke muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant 
friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts 
they bring, they carry them as silently away." Emerson was himself 
partial to the little poem, and many others have selected "Days" 
as the most perfect gem of all Emerson's poetry. It is particularly 
remarkable as a reflective lyric cast in blank verse instead of rime. 

EXPLANATORY: 

142: I. hypocritic. That is, muffled so as to conceal their real 
character. 

142: 7. pleached. Intertwined with branches, surrounded by a 
hedge. 

142: II. fillet. A ribbon or band around the head. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Under what figure are the days presented? (2) Why are they 
called hypocritic? Is the word used in a derogatory sense? (3) Why 
are they placed in marching order and in endless single file? (4) What 
is symbolized by diadems and fagots? (5) How is the personal 
application made in the last five lines? (6) Why is one particular 
day singled out for the application? (7) Why does this day pass in 
silence, showing a look of scorn? (8) Read the passage quoted in 
the introductory note above, and draw a comparison between the 
poetical and the prose expression of the same idea. Which appeals 
to you more? Try to make out from this the real difference between 
poetry and prose. (9) In what meter is the poem written? Scan the 
lines, noting particularly the frequent inversions, the cesural pauses, 
and the run-on lines. (See paragraph on "pauses," p. 642.) Can a 
successful lyric be written in blank verse? 

The Ambitious Guest (Hawthorne) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"The Ambitious Guest" was first published anonymously in the 
New England Magazine, June, 1836. : It was later included in the 
enlarged edition of Twice-told Tales (1842), and it has since been 
frequently reprinted as one of the most perfect specimens of Haw- 
thorne's art. The story is based on the following incident in John H. 
Spaulding's Historical Relics of the White Mountains: "Some time 
in June — before the great 'slide' in August, 1826 — there came a great 
storm, and the old veteran, Abel Crawford, coming down the Notch, 
noticed the trees slipping down, standing upright, and as he was passing 
Mr. Willey's, he called and informed him of the wonderful fact. Imme- 
diately, in a less exposed place, Mr. Willey prepared a shelter to which 
to flee in case of immediate danger; and in the night of August 28th, 
that year, he was, with his family, awakened by the thundering crash 
of the coming avalanche. Attempting to escape, that family, nine 
in number, rushed from the house, and were overtaken and buried 
alive under a vast pile of rocks, earth, trees, and water. By a remark- 
able circumstance, the house remained uninjured, as the slide divided 
about four rods back of the house (against a high flat rock), and came 
down on either side, with overwhelming power." Of the nine persons 



The Notes 557 

who were overwhelmed in the avalanche, the bodies of all but three 
were later found. Visitors to the spot have erected a cairn of small 
stones to the memory of the three unrecovered children. 

EXPLANATORY: 

149 : 12. Notch of the White Hills. The Notch in the White 
Mountains in western New Hampshire was rediscovered in 1771. 
"The Notch is a narrow rent, extending more than two miles between 
towering crags," says Spaulding. "The entrance of this wonderful 
chasm is about twenty-two feet wide, forming in itself a strange natural 
gateway . . . From a little beaver meadow the Saco river rises 
northerly from this gateway, and, struggling down its narrow bounds, 
shares with the road its wide gulf; and, having passed through the 
mountain, bears its tribute onward to the ocean." 

153 : 145. Mount Washington. One of the peaks of the White 
Mountains. Consult a map of the New England states and locate the 
several geographical references. 

154: 192. the Flume. "Below [Silver Cascade] a short distance, 
on the same side, falls another stream, clear and beautiful. This, from 
having worn a channel deeply into the rock, is called The Flume. In 
one place the stream leaps a hundred feet; and its whole course from 
the clouds down is foamy and wild." — Spaulding, Historical Relics, 
p. 50. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the theme of this story? Is it suggested in the title? 
(2) Read the incident upon which the story is based (introductory note) 
and show just what Hawthorne has added for the purpose of developing 
his theme. (3) Does he open the story with the setting, action, or 
characterization? (4) Why does he make the interior scene one of 
happiness and cheer? (5) By what means and why is the daughter 
of seventeen made prominent? (6) How is the guest received? (7) At 
what point is the first intimation of danger from the slide introduced? 
(8) Give a description of the guest's character. (9) Read the para- 
graph beginning "The secret of the young man's character," and see 
if you can detect an autobiographic note in it. (10) Why does Haw- 
thorne make the youth say, "I cannot die till I have achieved my 
destiny"? (11,) What effect had the youth's dream on each member 
of the family? Does this enhance the unity or totality of effect? 
(12) Relate their ambitions and say whether each is suited to the 
character expressing it. (13) Just why does Hawthorne not permit 
any one of these dreams to come true? Suppose, for instance, that the 
ludicrous wish of the little boy had been acted upon, what would have 
been the result? (14) The daughter's wish is not clearly expressed. 
How does the author artistically suggest what was in her heart? (15) 
Why is the grandmother's wish put last? What makes it so grewsome 
and effective in this place? (16) Why do you suppose the author 
made the strangers hesitate and then go on by the cabin? Were they 
lost? Would they have harmonized with the interior scene? (17) 
Read the passage beginning "I wonder how mariners feel," line 283. 
How does this foreshadow the actual catastrophe of the story? (18) 
Determine the exact point of the climax of the story. How is it made 
powerful in its imaginative appeal? (19) Why is the last paragraph 



Ss8 American Literary Readings 

devoted to the ambitious guest? Is there really any other ambitious 
character in the story? Can you decide, then, "whose was the agony 
of that death moment"? (20) Compare this youth with the youth 
in Longfellow's "Excelsior." (21) Go over the story carefully and 
collect all the words or phrases which help to make up the dominant 
tone of impending tragedy and thus foreshadow the catastrophe. 
For example, in the very first sentence, the fire is said to be made from 
"the splintered ruins of great trees that came crashing down the prec- 
ipice." (22) Read the famous extract from Poe's criticism of Haw- 
thorne's Tales, beginning "A skilful literary artist has constructed a 
tale" (p. 385), and determine for yourself just how nearly "The Ambi- 
tious Guest" comes to fulfilling those requirements. 

The Great Carbuncle (Hawthorne) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This story was first published in one of the erstwhile popular 
annuals, The Token, for 1837. It was also included in the first edition 
of Twice-told Tales in that year. Spaulding in his Historical Relics 
of the White Mountains records that there were numerous legends 
about the wonderful carbuncles hanging from the crags in the White 
Mountains. Many "carbuncle hunters," or "seekers," came to the 
mountains, but none ever reported the finding of one of the marvelous 
stones. One reason advanced as to why no one could find any trace 
of these great carbuncles was that an old Indian had pronounced "the 
red man's curse" upon the pale-faced gem-seekers. "When he died, 
his last wish was .... that the Great Spirit would send a black storm 
of fire and thunder, and splinter the crags, and roll down the carbuncles 
with mighty avalanches, and bury them deeply in the valleys, beneath 
the ruins of rocks and trees" (Spaulding, p. 31). Hawthorne took 
this legend and made the quest of the great carbuncle a symbol of the 
human search for happiness, or the desire for earthly glory of one kind 
or another. There is no direct hint of the germ of the story in his 
American Note Books, but one or two entries approach this theme rather 
closely. For instance, "some very famous jewel or other thing, much 
talked of all over the world. Some person to meet with it, and get 
possession of it in some unexpected manner amid homely circum- 
stances" (p. 109). Or, "A man will undergo great toil and hardship 
for ends that must be many years distant, — as wealth or fame, — but 
none for an end that may be close at hand, — as the joys of heaven" 
(p. 107). Or again, "A person or family long desires some particular 
good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great pest of 
their lives" (p. 27). 

EXPLANATORY: 

158 : 2. Crystal Hills. The White Mountains in western New 
Hampshire were sometimes called Crystal Hills from the number of 
crystals found there. 

158: II. Amonoosuc{k). The Wild Amonoosuc, one of the upper 
branches of the Lower Amonoosuc, which rises in the White Mountains 
and flows west and south into the Connecticut. 

160 : 58. Doctor Cacaphodel. Doctor Bad-odor. 

160: 66. Ichabod Pigsnort. Ichabod means "bereft of glory." 



The Notes 559 

Note how satirical Hawthorne is in naming the mere seekers after 
wealth. Compare "Gathcrgold" in "The Great Stone Face." 

160 : 68. Air. Norton's church. John Norton (1606-1663) was 
the successor of John Cotton as minister in the old First Church at 
Boston. 

160 : 72. pine-tree shillings. A silver coin engraved with an 
image of a pine tree on one side. See Hawthorne's story of "The 
Pine-Tree Shillings" in Grandfather' s Chair. 

161 : 114. Captain Smith. Captain John Smith visited the coast 
of New England in 1 614. 

164 : 206. the Great Mogul's best diamond. The Koh-i-noor, now 
in possession of the British government, was once owned by the Great 
Mogul of Delhi, India. 

165 : 233. Grub Street. A street in London formerly frequented 
by needy poets. It is now called Milton Street. 

166 : 277. in rerum natura. In the nature of things. 

168 : 360. cairn. A mound of loose stones erected as a memorial. 

173 : 540. Persian idolater. The ancient Persians worshiped the 
sun. 

173 : 542. the great fire of London. Occurred in 1666. This, 
together with the references to Captain Smith and Mr. Norton's 
church above, fixes the approximate date of the setting of the story. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What kind of story would you call this? (The allegory is so 
naturally and spontaneously wrought out that we almost forget that 
the characters are mere types of mankind and that the search for the 
great carbuncle is nothing less than a symbol of the never-ceasing 
human search for happiness or the selfish desire to possess some earthly 
good.) (2) Under what circumstances does the author bring together 
the various characters? Describe them and tell what types they 
represent. (3) How are Hannah and Matthew differentiated from 
the other seekers? (See the suggestion in the second sentence of 
paragraph i, and note that they are described in a separate paragraph 
on p. 161.) (4) What was the one topic of conversation in the hut 
that night? (5) Why is the spectacled Cynic made a sort of spokes- 
man for the company? (Note how the author thus secures a natural 
means for his satiric and ironic strokes, and thus also adds a touch 
of grim humor.) (6) Tell in detail just what each one of the seekers 
desired to do with the carbuncle, and show how the Cynic gives each 
an ironic thrust. (7) What one touch differentiates the plans of the 
young couple from all the other seekers? Were they entirely selfish 
in their desires? (8) What does the author say about the Cynic who 
did not believe in the Great Carbuncle, calling it " the Great Humbug" ? 
(9) What is suggested by the appearance of the strange light in the 
midst of the Cynic's speech? Do you suppose Hannah and Matthew 
were among those who saw it, or was it visible only to those who were 
so eager and feverish in the search that they could not sleep? (10) Is 
it an artistic touch to make the little wife the more ambitious of the 
two? (Note how the author works out this point in making her urge 
Matthew on, and in making her the last of the two to give up the 
quest but the first to give out in strength.) (11) Is the quest of the 
married couple really an allegorical presentation of average everyday 



560 American Literary Readings 

human life? How so? (12) Why were the two almost lost in the 
mountain heights? (13) Why were they the only ones allowed to 
understand and appreciate the meaning of the wonderful light? (14) 
What happened to each of the other seekers? Do you think each got 
just what he deserved? (15) In what speech of Matthew's is the 
real secret of human happiness expressed (p. 168)? (16) What is the 
chief lesson you learn from the story? Is the moral obtrusive, that is, 
is it made too prominent for artistic effect? , (17) Read aloud the 
paragraph beginning, "Out of the hollow of their hands," p. 172, and 
the climax passage on p. 169, beginning "Nor could the young bride" 
and continuing over two paragraphs, and comment on the quality of 
the thought and style. (18) Look over the story again, and see how 
it is constructed. Point out the sections dealing with the setting, the 
characters, the evening spent in preparation for the quest, the quest 
of Hannah and Matthew, the finding of the carbuncle (climax), the 
fate of the seekers, the conclusion. (19) Suggested subjects for 
compositions on Hawthorne: Write a story imitating Hawthorne's 
manner as nearly as possible (some of his own suggestions in Ameri- 
can Note Books may be used. Several are given above in the intro- 
ductory note on "The Great Carbuncle." Another suggestive one is 
the following: "A snake taken into a man's stomach and nourished 
from fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type 
of envy or some other evil passion"); A Comparison of "The Great 
Stone Face" with "The Great Carbuncle"; A Comparison of Poe's 
Stories with Hawthorne's; The Charm of Hawthorne's Style; Haw- 
thorne's Power of Description. 

The Wedding-Knell (Hawthorne) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This story was written in 1835, published in The Token for 1836, 
and included in the first edition of Twice-told Tales in 1837. Poe said, 
" 'The Wedding Knell' is full of the boldest imagination — an imagination 
fully controlled by taste. The most captious critic could find no flaw 
in this production." See Poe's "Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told 
Tales," p. 382. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(l) Why does Hawthorne place this legend so far back in the past? 
Is it based on fact, or is it purely imaginary? (2) Explain the exact 
situation between the lovers. (3) Expound carefully the character 
of each. (4) Why was it arranged for the bride and her party to 
come to the church first? (5) Explain in detail the effect of the sound 
of the tolling bell. Do you suspect whose funeral knell is being rung? 

(6) How does Hawthorne artistically present to us the workings of 
Mrs. Dabney's conscience as the bridegroom and his friends enter? 

(7) What impression does the description of the funeral make upon 
your mind? (8) Develop the contrast as fully as you can from memory. 
(9) Do you think Mr. EUenwood was cruel? Which of the two had 
been the more cruel? (10) What was the effect on Mrs. Dabney? 
Of her confession and contrition upon him? Is there a note of deep 
pathos here? (11) At one point in the story the minister sent an 
attendant to stop the tolling of the bell. Why does Hawthorne make 
it continue to toll until the very end of the story? What sound was 



llie Notes 561 

mingled with it at the close? (12) Is the story well named? (13) 
What is the effect of such a story on your mind? Do you like it? Do 
you feel that you understand life better after you have read it thought- 
fully? (14) Characterize Hawthorne's style as shown in this selection. 

Evangeline (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

The composition of Evangeline was begun in 1845, and the poem 
was completed and published in 1847. ■ The origin of the poet's interest 
in the legend is significant because it shows the cordial relations which 
existed between two of our greatest writers. Nathaniel Hawthorne 
heard the legend from Reverend H. L. Conolly, of Salem, who learned 
the story from a French Canadian, an attendant at his church. In his 
notebook Hawthorne put down the legend thus: "H. L. C. heard 
from a French Canadian a story of a young couple in Acadie. On their 
marriage-day all the men of the Province were summoned to assemble 
in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they were all 
seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England, — among 
them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him — wandered 
about New England all her lifetime, and at last, when she was old, 
she found her bridegroom on his deathbed. The shock was so great 
that it killed her likewise." At a dinner in Longfellow's home, Craigie 
House, Cambridge, Mr. Conolly repeated the legend, saying that he 
had offered the material to Hawthorne as a plot for a tale, but appar- 
ently had not been able to get him to use it. Longfellow immediately 
asked Hawthorne to permit him to write a poem on the subject, and 
Hawthorne readily consented. Later, when Evangeline appeared, 
Hawthorne wrote an appreciative review of it and said in a letter to 
Longfellow that he had read the poem "with more pleasure than it 
would be decorous to express." 

A brief historical outline is essential to the clear understanding of 
the poem. France colonized the northeastern coast of North America 
about 1604, and the English the eastern coast about 1620. There was 
a great struggle for supremacy going on between France and England 
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and naturally there 
was much contention and war between the French and English settlers 
in America. By the treaty of Utrecht, 1713, all that part of North 
America known as Nova Scotia was ceded by France to England. The 
country was still occupied by the French settlers, known as Acadians 
from the early name given to the peninsula by the French, imitating, it 
is said, the Indian name for this district; and these French settlers, 
because they differed so much from the English in manner, customs, and 
particularly religion, would not take the oath of allegiance and fight 
on the English side. They merely took the obligation to remain neutral 
in any further conflict between the French and English soldiers. In 
1 741 the English made a settlement at Halifax on the eastern shore 
of Nova Scotia, and naturally rivalry and envy sprang up between 
this colony and the French settlements on the west shore of the penin- 
sula. In 1755 war broke out again, and on finding that the Acadians 
were violating their promise of neutrality, the English decided to remove 
them from the province and scatter them among the English colonies 
along the Atlantic coast. A cleverly conceived and skillfully executed 
plan put the Acadians entirely at the mercy of the English soldiers. 

19 



562 American Literary Readings 

On September 2 Colonel John Winslow, acting under the authority of 
Governors Lawrence of Nova Scotia and Shirley of Massachusetts, 
called all the men and boys over ten years of age to meet in the church 
at Grand-Pre on September 5 to hear the will of His Majesty George II 
with respect to their province. The story of the detention and deporta- 
tion is vividly told in the poem. The English tried to keep members 
of the same families together, but naturally amid so much confusion and 
distress, some cruel separations were inevitable. Several thousands 
of the Acadians were scattered along the Atlantic coast as far south as 
Virginia, and later a colony of over six hundred made their way to 
southern Louisiana to join the JPrench settlements already there. 

The meter of the poem is the dactylic hexameter, the measure 
of the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek and of Vergil's Aeneid in Latin. 
Goethe used this meter in his Hermann und Dorothea, and because 
of the similarity of the themes, Longfellow is thought to have received 
the suggestion for the meter of Evangeline from the German poem. 
The classic meter is dependent upon syllable length, whereas English 
rhythm is dependent upon the regular recurrence of accented and 
unaccented syllables. In English, then, the dactylic hexameter line 
consists of six feet, each foot being composed of one accented syllable 
followed by two unaccented syllables. Sometimes one heavy syllable 
may be substituted for the two light or unaccented syllables, just as 
a spondee, or two long syllables, may be substituted for the one long 
and two short syllables of the dactyl. In reading the long hexameter 
line, it is necessary to find a pause for the voice, even though it be a 
slight one, at some point in each line. This pause is called the cesura. 
It may occur at any point after the first and before the last foot; and 
sometimes there is an additional or secondary pause, as in the following 
line: 

Bearded with | moss, 1| and in | garments | green, || indis | tinct in the I twihght. 

The third foot, garments, illustrates the spondaic foot, or the substitution 
of one syllable for the two light syllables of the dactyl. The pupil 
should be drilled on the scansion until he can read the lines smoothly 
and rhythmically. The long swing of the rhythm has been compared 
to the ebb and flow of "the deep- voiced neighboring ocean" whose 
"accents disconsolate answer the wail of the forest." The meter is 
peculiarly well suited to the melancholy theme of the poem. 

Evangeline is generally accepted as Longfellow's masterpiece. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes so classed it, saying, " Of the longer poems of our 
chief singer, I should not hesitate to select Evangeline as the master- 
piece, and I think the general verdict of opinion would confirm my 
choice . . . From the first line of the poem, from its first words, we 
read as we would float down a broad and placid river, murmuring 
softly against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled 
wilderness aU around." 

Suggested Plan of Lessons for "Evangeline" 
First reading: Two lessons 

The two parts should be assigned on successive days for rapid 
reading outside the class. The pupils should be asked to reproduce 
the narrative in detail by cantos. An outline of the whole poem should 
then be made by requiring the pupils to suggest suitable titles for the 



The Notes 563 

"Prelude," or Introduction, for the two larger Parts, for the five 
Cantos in each Part, and for the "Postlude," or Conclusion. Sugges- 
tions for this outline will be found in the general questions below. 
After this first reading most of these general questions may be answered 
by the pupils, but some of the more specific questions may be deferred 
until a later period during the study of the poem. 

Study and analysis: Eleven lessons 

One lesson on the "Prelude" and one on each of the cantos will 
make a good average assignment for closer study. In this study the 
notes should be carefully consulted, and specific exercises from the notes 
and thought questions should be prepared from day to day. Some of 
the questions may be assigned for written reports and some for class- 
room quizzes, either oral or written. The teacher must be the judge 
of the amount and character of work to be assigned to individual 
classes. Memory selections and short compositions on special topics 
may be interspersed from time to time. 

Third reading: Five lessons 

The pupils should be carefully drilled in scansion and rhythmic 
phrasing before any attempt at the final interpretative oral reading is 
made. They should be required to read the entire poem in sequence 
and in their best style. No part of the work is more important than 
this final oral reading of the complete poem. During the days while this 
reading is in progress, a long composition on the story as a whole or on 
some particular subject suggested by the study should be prepared by 
the pupils as a final exercise. 

General questions on "Evangeline" 

(i) Under what circumstances was the poem undertaken by 
Longfellow? (See introductory note.) (2) Relate the facts which 
make the setting or historical background of the poem. (3) Is the 
poem epic, lyric, or dramatic? (4) E. C. Stedman called Evangeline 
"the flower of American idyls." Explain just why he called the poem 
an idyl. (It is perhaps better to 'classify it as an epic, or narrative poem.) 
(5) What is the basic theme of the poem? (Suggestion: Summarize 
the whole story in one concise sentence.) (6) What would be a good 
title for each of the two parts? (Suggestion: Be sure to bring out in 
your answer the happiness and contentment in the first part and the 
sorrows of separation and wandering in the second.) (7) The "Pre- 
lude," or Prologue, strikes the dominant tone and suggests the nature and 
quality of the story. Canto i of Part I gives a description of Grand- 
Pre and its people, thus giving the setting and chief characters of the 
story; Canto ir presents the lovers in all their happiness in Benedict's 
home, while Basil comes in to announce the arrival of the English ships; 
III relates the circumstances of the betrothal, which was practically 
equivalent to a marriage ceremony; iv relates the tragic interruption 
of the betrothal; and v tells of the deportation and separation of the 
lovers along with all the other Acadians. Canto i of Part II relates 
the fortunes of the lovers in separation; 11 shows Evangeline journeying 
down the Mississippi River, while Gabriel passes upstream in the night ; 
III gives the picture of Evangeline in Basil's home in Louisiana; iv 
tells of Evangeline's wanderings in search of Gabriel; V tells of the 
end of the search; in a brief "Postlude," or Epilogue, the poet describes 
the grave of Evangeline and reverts to the "Prelude," thus closing the 



564 American Literary Readings 

poem with the identical note with which it opened. Reduce all this 
to a carefully made outline, using your own words and ideas as far as 
possible. (8) What is the dominant tone of the whole story? (9) Why 
do we enjoy a poem full of sadness, melancholy, sentiment, purity, 
endurance? (10) What do you think is the chief thing which makes 
this poem so universally popular? (11) What qualities of style help 
to make Evangeline a great work of art? (Suggestion: Diction, 
imagery, grace, simplicity, melody, beauty, idyllic pictures, rhythm, 
unity of tone and form — these would make good topics for discussion 
in answering this question.) (12) In what meter is the poem written 
(see introductory note) ? (13) Scan ten lines after the following model : 

This is the | forest pri I meval. The murmuring | pines and the | hemlocks. 
Bearded with | moss, || and in | garments | green, || indis | tinct in the I twihght 
Stand Hke | Druid of | eld, 1 1 with | voices | sad and pro phetic. 

(14) Trace on the accompanying map the wanderings of Evangeline, 
citing references from the text for each important point. (15) Sug- 
gested topics for themes: Beautiful Descriptions in the Poem; Figura- 
tive Language in Evangeline; A Character Sketch of Evangeline (or 
Gabriel, Basil, Benedict, Father Felician, Ren6 Leblanc); Catholic 
Life and Coloring in the Poem; The Home Life of the Acadians; Biblical 
Allusions in the Poem; The Diction of Evangeline; Superstitions and 
Legends of the Acadians; The Two Homes of Basil Lajeunesse; Evan- 
geline's Journey Down the Mississippi; An Imaginary Description of 
Gabriel's Wanderings; Moral Lessons Drawn from the Poem; A 
Comparison of Evangeline with Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. 

The "Prelude" to "Evangeline" 
EXPLANATORY: 

190: I. primeval. Original, uncut, virgin. Note that this word 
occurs twice in the "Prelude" and twice in the "Postlude." What is 
the effect of this repetition? 

190 : 3. Druids of eld. Ancient Celtic priests. Why is eld 
preferred to old? 

190 : 4. harpers hoar. White-haired minstrels. In what way 
are the pines like harpers with long beards and hair? 

191 : 15. Grand-Pre. A French name meaning "great meadow." 
See lines 22, 23 for an interpretation of the name. 

191 : 18. List. A poetic form; why is it preferred to listen? 

191 : 19. Acadie. Nova Scotia; a name, perhaps of Indian origin, 
given by the French settlers to a large but vaguely defined territory 
including the present Nova Scotia. Compare the Parish of Acadia 
and the term "Cajun" still in use as a designation of the descendants 
of the Acadians in Louisiana. Compare also the name Arcadia, applied 
in pastoral romance to a picturesque and idealized country in the 
Peloponnesus. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the chief function of the "Prelude"? (2) What two 
large natural objects are singled out for personification in the opening 
passage, and why? (3) What is the dominant tone of the "Prelude"? 
(4) Point out seven words that indicate and emphasize this tone. 



The Notes 



56s 



(5) Point out in the second stanza three similes that suggest the 
general nature- of the theme an# thus emphasize the dominant tone, 

(6) In what four lines is the theme of the whole poem definitely stated? 

(7) Memorize these lines. 



Evangeline I, i 
EXPLANATORY: 

191 : 20. Minas. Locate in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. 

191 : 27. cornfields. Wheatfields. In English poetry corn practi- 
cally always means wheat; Longfellow discusses the Indian corn in 
lines 1 208-1 2 1 5, but he calls it maize, not corn. 




1 Grand Pre on B.isin of Minas 

2 Philadelphia 

3 Acadian Coast 

4 Atchafalaya River (Wachita willows +) 



5 The Teche (Basil's homco) 

6 Adayes (Natchitoches) 

7 Ozark Mountains (The Mission o) 

8 Saginaw River (Gabriel's lodge") 



191 : 29. Blomidon. A high promontory at the entrance of the 
Basin of Minas. 

192 : 34. Normandy. A province in northern France, whence 
many of the settlers of Acadia came. 

192 : 34. Henries. Early Kings of France, probably Henry III 
(died 1589) and Henry IV (died 1610). 

192 : 39. kirtles. The dress of the Acadian women, a sort of 
jacket or bodice with a skirt attached. 

192 : 49. Angelus. A bell rung morning, noon, and evening, to 
remind Roman Catholics to repeat the prayer beginning "Angelus 
Domini" (Angel of the Lord), referring to the Angel Gabriel's annuncia- 
tion to Mary that she was to be the mother of the Savior. If possible, 
study Millet's picture, "The Angelus," in this connection. 

193 : 61. Gentle Evangeline. On December 8, 1845, while Long- 
fellow was writing this poem, he recorded this note in his Journal: 
"I know not what name to give to — not my new baby, but my new 



S66 American Literary Readings 

poem. Shall it be 'Gabrielle,' or 'Celestine,' or 'Evangeline'?" Do 
you think he made a wise choice? What did he do with the first name? 
193 : 68. kine. An old plural of cow. The breath of cattle is 
notably pure and sweet. The word kine occurs again in line 916. 

193 : T2. hyssop. A plant used in the Jewish ordinance of purifica- 
tion. In the ordinance of the Passover a sprig of hyssop was used to 
sprinkle the lamb's blood over the door posts. See Exodus 12:22. 

194 : 74. beads . . . missal. The rosary and mass-book used by 
the Roman Catholics. 

194 : 87. penthouse. An overhanging shed. 

194 : 91-92. moss-grown bucket. Compare Samuel Woodworth's 
poem, "The Old Oaken Bucket." 

195 • 94- seraglio. The walled palace in which the sultans of Turkey 
keep their wives. Note the transferred epithet feathered. 

195: 96. Peter. Explain the biblical allusion. See Matthew 26:75. 
195 : 100. dove-cot. A pigeon house. The dove, or pigeon, is a 
symbol of love and peace. See the same word in line 899. 

195 : 107. hem of her garment. Explain the allusion ; Matthew 9 : 20. 
196: 122. plain-song. A chant used in the Roman Catholic service. 

196 : 130. smithy. Blacksmith shop. The word also occurs in 
"The Village Blacksmith." Compare Basil with the village blacksmith. 

196 : 133. nuns going into the chapel. That is, the sparks dis- 
appeared like nuns going into the church. 

196 : 137. wondrous stone. This was an old superstition. People 
believed the little stone had miraculous curative powers for certain 
diseases, and hence one was considered lucky to find it. 

197 : 144. Sunshine of Saint Eulalie. If the sun shines clearly on 
Saint Eulalie's day (February 12), it is a sign that the apple harvest will 
be abundant. Scan the line to determine the correct accent of Eulalie. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Locate Grand-Pre on your map, and describe the surroundings 
(lines 20-32). (2) Describe the village life (lines 33-57). Why does 
the poet make it all so ideally beautiful and happy? (3) What two 
characters are first introduced? (4) What impression do you get of 
Evangeline's disposition and character? (5) Why is Benedict's age 
given as "seventy winters" and Evangeline's as "seventeen summers"? 

(6) Which one of these two characters is more fully described? Why? 

(7) Comment on the beauty and force of the line, "When she had 
passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." Determine by 
the rhythm the correct pronunciation of exquisite . (8) What concrete 
images are presented in the description of Benedict's home (lines 
82-102)? Are these details well selected for the poet's purpose? Does 
the picture give you the sense of plenty and peace and idyllic happiness? 
(9) How are the two chief characters introduced ? (10) Why is so much 
said of the childhood associations of Gabriel and Evangeline (lines 119- 
140)? (11) What figures of speech do you find in lines 30, 50, 57 
(paradox), 62 (metonymy), 63, 94 (transferred epithet), 128? (12) Why 
are "gossiping looms" and "whir of the wheels" effective ''lines 41-42)? 

Evangeline I, 11 
EXPLANATORY: 

197 : 149. sign of the Scorpion. Scorpion is the eighth sign of the 
zodiac; it is late in October when the sun enters this sign. 



The Notes 567 

197 : 150. leaden. Dull, gloomy, heavy. Note how the poet 
selects words and images which forebode calamity or misfortune. 

197 • 153- ^•^ Jacob of old. Retell the story as recorded in Genesis 
32, and note the appropriateness of the comparison. 

198: 159. Summer of All-Saints. November i is All-Saints' Day. 
We usually designate this season as Indian summer. Note how 
Longfellow has forced his dates here. The deportation actually took 
place on September 5-10. See question (2) below. 

198 : 170. Persian. The Greek historian Herodotus tells us that 
Xerxes found a beautifvd plane-tree and fell so much in love with it 
that he ordered it to be adorned with jewels and rich mantles. . 

200 : 205. pewter plates on the dresser. Dresser here means a 
sideboard or cupboard. In former times pewter plates and utensils 
were used by the better classes of people. 

201 : 238. Gaspereau. A small river which empties into Minas 
near the village of Grand-Pre. 

202 : 240. his Majesty's mandate. The King of England at this 
time was George II. The order was really signed by Lieutenant 
Colonel John Winslow and dated September 2, 1 755. The proclamation 
called all the men and lads over ten years of age to assemble in the 
church to hear what his Majesty intended. 

202 : 249. Louisburg . . . Beau Sejour . . . Port Royal. Places 
taken by the English from the French in previous wars, Port Royal 
(now Annapolis) in 1710, Louisburg in 1745, and Beau Sejour in 1755 
just a short time before the deportation of the Acadians. It is said 
that several hundred Acadians were taken prisoners when Beau Sejour 
fell. This would seem to indicate that the English had just reasons 
to complain against the Acadians for failure to keep their promise of 
neutrality. 

203 : 261. glebe. Soil, a poetic word. 

203 : 267. notary. An officer authorized to take acknowledg- 
ments, draw up contracts, and the like. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How is the season of the year indicated in the opening lines? 

(2) Why has Longfellow forced the date forward here nearly two 
months? (Note the beautiful descriptive passages that follow.) 

(3) What general tone is struck in the first lines of stanza i, and how 
is the contrast drawn in the description of the Summer of All-Saints? 

(4) Reproduce in your own words the pastoral picture of lines 1 71-198. 
Why do you suppose Evangeline's heifer "bore the bell"? (5) Re- 
produce similarly the interior scene in Benedict's home (lines 199-217), 
Evangeline has been called a panorama of beautiful pictures. Do 
these scenes justify this statement? (6) By what signs did Benedict 
and Evangeline know who were coming when they heard footsteps 
on the outside? (7) Contrast Benedict's optimistic with Basil's 
pessimistic view regarding the purpose of the English soldiers. Which 
one was right? (8) Why was Benedict so happy on this particular 
night? Do you suppose that the fact that he was getting old had 
any effect on his desire to see Evangeline happily married? (9) What 
contract is referred to in line 259? Note how deftly and rapidly the 
lines here lead up to and prepare for the betrothal in the next canto. 
(10) Point out the figures of speech in lines 153, 162-163, 190, 228, 
246. (11) Memorize lines 199-214. 



568 American Literary Readings 

Evangeline I, in 
EXPLANATORY: 

203 : 276. an old French fort. Port Royal before it was taken 
by the English in 17 10. Rene Leblanc is a real historical character, 
the only one in the poem. 

204 : 280. Loup-garou. A werwolf, in medieval superstition a 
man who had the power of changing into a wolf, in which form he 
devoured men. The superstitions mentioned in the following lines 
are still circulated in various forms. 

204 : 287. writ. A poetic or archaic form of written. Until 
recently folklore was not really written down, but transmitted by 
tradition from generation to generation. 

204 : 297. irascible. Easily angered, fiery. 

205 : 306. an ancient city. Florence, Italy. 

206 : 344. draught-board. Checker-board. In many communities 
the game of checkers is still called draughts. 

207 : 348. embrasure. An enlarged space in the wall where a 
window is set. 

207 : 354. curfew. From the old French coufeu, composed of 
covrir + feu, cover the fire. 

208: 381. Repeat the incident as related in Genesis 21:9-21. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the chief incident in this canto? (2) Give in your 
own words a brief sketch of the notary public. (3) Enumerate the 
superstitions mentioned. (4) Relate the legend of the statue of 
justice. Why is this legend appropriate just at this point in the 
story? (It foreshadows in a way Evangeline's own story.) (5) Was 
the betrothal ceremony equivalent to a marriage? Why does the 
notary speak of "the bride and the bridegroom"? (6) Describe the 
happy fireside scene after the betrothal. (7) What effects are pro- 
duced by the full description of Evangeline's chamber and its con- 
tents? Does it indicate the girl's character? (8) Explain line 371. 
(9) Why is the feeling of sadness mentioned (line 376)? (10) Explain 
the force of the figures in lines 268, 270, 328-329, 351-352, 377-378, 
380-381. 

Evangeline I, iv 
EXPLANATORY: 

208 : 386. hundred hands. This suggests Briarcus, the hundred- 
handed giant of Greek mythology. Note the appropriateness of the 
figure. 

209 : 408. gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. Note the two con- 
trasting meanings of gayest. 

210 : 413. Tons les Bourgeois, etc. Titles of old French songs. 

211 : 442. sultry solstice. The summer solstice is June 21. Ex- 
plain why it is called solstice. 

211 : 451. imprecations. Cursings. 

212 : 461. chancel. The inclosed space in a church where the 
officiating priests retire. Why was Father Felician here, do you 
think? 

212 : 466. tocsin's alarum. The alarm of a signal bell. A drum 
beat is sometimes used as a tocsin or signal of alarm. 



The Notes 569 

213 : 474. Lof where the crucified Christ. In Catholic churches 
there is always an image of Christ on the cross set up in a conspicuous 
place. 

213: 476. "Father, forgive them." See Luke 23:34. 

213 : 484. Ave Maria. The Latin hymn commemorating the 
angel Gabriel's salutation to the Virgin, beginning Ave Maria, "Hail, 
Mary!" See Luke 1:28. 

213: 486. Elijah ascending to heaven. Explain. See II Kings 2:11. 

214: 498. ambrosial. Ambrosia was the delicious food of the gods 
on Mount Olympus. In what sense is the adjective applied to the 
meadows here? Find a hint in line 500. 

214 : 507. the Prophet descending from Sinai. Explain. See 
Exodus 34: 29-35. 

214 : 508. Angelus. See note on line 49. The Angelus is again 
mentioned in line 589. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Recall from your outline the theme or subject of this canto. 
At what point was the tragic action first introduced (see end of Canto 
l)? How was it foreshadowed in Canto 111? How is it developed 
in this canto? (2) What is the effect aimed at in the idyllic, joyous 
scenes of the first two stanzas? (3) Point out half a dozen words 
which emphasize the dominant tone of happiness in the first stanza. 
(4) Why was Benedict giving this merrymaking at his home? (5) 
Describe the scene of the presentation of the king's proclamation 
and its eflfect. Notice how the poet pauses to make the long Homeric 
simile beginning "As, when the air" (line 442) between the delivery 
of the proclamation and its effect. (6) Give the substance of Father 
Felician's appeal to his people. (7) What is the effect on the reader 
of the ready response and the religious fervor of the prisoners? (8) 
Why do you suppose Evangeline prepared the supper in her home? 
Was it eaten? See line 515. (9) Read the end of Canto III, partic- 
ularly lines 374-380, and note the contrast between them and the 
ending of Canto iv, lines 509-513. How is the situation reversed and 
what is the artistic effect? (10) What is meant by the "gloomier 
grave of the living" (line 513)? (11) How do you imagine Evangeline 
felt when she returned to her empty, lonely home? (12) What is the 
artistic effect of the storm? (13) What tale is referred to in line 522? 
Recall how it was introduced and retell it. (14) Explain the appro- 
priateness of the figures in lines 385-386, 410-41 1,415, 442-447, 453-454, 
465-466, 486, 506-507, 513. (15) Study out the balanced and parallel 
effects in lines 382-383 and 418-419. Find other examples of balance 
and parallel in the poem. 

Evangeline I, v 
EXPLANATORY: ^ 

215 : 524. fifth day. This is historically correct. The prisoners 
were locked in the church on September 5, 1755, and the deportation took 
place on September 10. 

215. 527. neighboring hamlets. Not only the people of Grand-Pr^, 
but the settlers in the whole province were deported. 

215 : 528. ponderous wains. Heavy wagons. Wains is now used 
only in poetry. 



570 American Literary Readings 

218 : 575. refluent. Flowing back, the outgoing tide. Why does 
the poet say the ocean fled from the shore? 

218 : 577. kelp. A kind of seaweed, 
218 : 579. leaguer. A camp. 

219 : 597- Paul on Melita's desolate sea-shore. When the apostle 
Paul was being carried to Rome, a great storm arose and wrecked 
the vessel, casting the passengers and sailors on the island of Melita, 
or Malta, in the Mediterranean. Paul comforted and directed the 
people in a masterly way. See Acts 27 and 28 for the whole story. 

219: 605. Benedicite. Latin, "Be ye blessed." Pronounce in 
five syllables. Compare benediction and the proper name Benedict. 

216 : 615. Titan-like. In Greek mythology, the Titans were 
the huge sons Heaven and Earth. Briareus, the hundred-handed, 
was one of these giants, or Titans. 

220 : 621. gleeds. Sparks, burning coals; a poetic word. 

221: 630. Then rose a sound of dread. Compare this passage 
with the description in "Kit Carson's Ride," p. 502. 

222 : 657. bell or book. In the Catholic burial ceremony the bell 
is tolled for the passing soul while the ritual is being recited from the 
book. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) This canto completes the tragic action of Part I. Recall the 
title of this canto from your outline. (2) The cock crowed cheerily 
in the midst of all this suffering. Is this a natural touch? (3) What 
pathetic reference is made in regard to the children (lines 531-532)? 
Did they know why they were hauling the household goods to the sea- 
shore? (4) Describe the procession to the seashore. (5) Why is it 
effective to place the lovers together for a brief moment? (6) It is 
said that the English officers tried to keep families together as far as 
possible. Is Longfellow justified in making the scene one of cruelty, 
distress, and heartlessness? (7) Describe the scene on the shore and 
in the village after the embarkation, and contrast it with the description 
of the happy village of Canto i. (8) Describe the burning of Grand- 
Pr6 (lines 618-640). What effect has this event on Benedict? On 
the reader's sympathy? (9) Why is it essential to the plan of the 
story to allow Benedict to die on the seashore before the deportation? 

(10) What is the effect of his death on Evangeline? On the reader? 

(11) Contrast the character of Benedict with that of Basil. 

Evangeline II, i 
EXPLANATORY: 

222 : 666. Many a weary year. Perhaps not more than ten years. 
Note the transferred epithet. Why were the years weary, and why 
did they seem so many? If we imagine Evangeline sixteen or seventeen 
at the time of the opening of the story, she would still be a young woman 
(see line 683). 

222 : 670. on separate coasts. The Acadians were distributed 
among the English settlements from New England to the South Atlantic 
colonies. Some of our characters (see lines 1258 ff.) were landed at 
Philadelphia. About a year after the deportation, several hundred 
of the Acadians migrated to lower Louisiana to join the French settle- 
ments there. Among these were, doubtless, Gabriel and Basil. 



The Notes 571 

223 : 674. savannas. Plains, level tracts; from the Old Spanish. 
223 : 675. Father of Waters. This is the meaning of the Indian 
word Mississippi. 

223 : 677. mammoth. A large prehistoric elephant, remains of 
which have been found scattered over the central portions of North 
America. 

224 : 705. Coureiirs-des-Bois. Literally "runners of the woods"; 
a general term for trappers and hunters. Voyageur in line 707 is another 
French word meaning traveler or transportation agent for the fur 
traders. 

224: 713. to hraid St. Catherine's tresses. Saint Catherine was the 
patron saint of virginity; hence to braid St. Catherine's tresses means 
to remain unmarried. 

225 : 732. shards. Broken pieces of pottery. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How much time do you think is supposed to have passed 
between Part I and the main action of Part II ? (Consider, for example, 
what Basil had accomplished during this time.) (2) What function 
does this canto serve for the whole of Part II? (3) Give a general 
summary of the experiences of the dispersed Acadians. (4) Why is 
Evangeline's name not mentioned in line 681, and Gabriel's in line 
698? (5) Where (see line 1258) and how was Evangeline spending 
these first years? (6) Why was Gabriel not looking for Evangeline 
during this time and later? (Remember that this is a tale of "the 
beauty and strength of woman's devotion.") (4) Comment on the 
expressiveness of the personification in line 676; the diminishing climax 
in line 699. (5) Point out in this canto two Homeric similes, that 
is, long, fully detailed and expounded comparisons. (6) Memorize 
lines 715-717 and 720-727. 

Evangeline II, 11 
EXPLANATORY: 

226 : 741. Beautiful River. The Indian name Ohio is said to mean 
"beautiful river." 

226 : 750. Acadian coast. The country along the banks of the 
Mississippi River below* Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is still sometimes 
called the Acadian coast. Locate Opelousas, now a town in St. 
Landry's Parish. 

227 : 759. pelicans. The pelican is used as an emblem on the seal 
of the state of Louisiana. 

228 : 782. shrinking mimosa. The sensitive plant which folds or 
closes its leaves at night or when shaken or disturbed. In the South 
the children touch it and exclaim "Be ashamed! " and the plant seems 
to hide itself in shame. Is the epithet well chosen? 

229 : 809. lotus. The American lotus, or Nelumbium, a large, 
yellow-flowering aquatic plant of the lily family. It has broad shield- 
shaped leaves, and the flower-stems rise from two to six feet out of 
shallow water. 

229 : 821. the ladder of Jacob. Explain the allusion. See Genesis 
28:12 ff. 

231 : 853. buoy. Pronounced in one syllable, boi'. Why? 

231 : 856. Teche. This river empties into Grand Lake, a part of 



572 American Literary Readings 

the Atchafalaya. The settlements of St. Maur and St. Martin are on 
the Teche. St. Martin is now a parish in southern Louisiana. 

232 : 878. Bacchantes. The female revelers in the orgies in honor 
of Bacchus, the god of wine. Is the allusion appropriate? 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Why did Longfellow choose the month of May for Evangeline's 
voyage down the Mississippi? (2) Trace an imaginary line of Evan- 
geline's wanderings from Philadelphia to Basil's home on the Teche, 
touching at each of the places mentioned in this canto. (3) Point 
out some of the most attractive descriptive passages in this canto. 
(4) How do you think Longfellow could have drawn such wonderful 
pictures without ever having seen the countries he described? (5) 
Why was it necessary and appropriate to have Father Felician attend 
Evangeline as a guide on this part of her journey? Did he stay with 
her all the way through? Why? (6) How did the travelers manage 
to pass from the Mississippi to the Atchafalaya River? From the 
Atchafalaya to the Teche? (See a large map of Louisiana.) (7) 
Describe fully the scene on the lakes of the Atchafalaya where Evange- 
line's party stopped for the night. (8) Why does the poet make so 
full a description of the scene "under the boughs of Wachita willows"? 
What point in the narrative do we reach here? (9) Compare Jacob's 
dream with Evangeline's. (10) How are suspense and tenseness 
gained by the appearance of the light, swift boat (lines 827 ff.)? (11) 
How near did the lovers come to meeting? (12) What premonitions 
did Evangeline have? (13) Notice the beautiful and expressive stanza 
with which the canto closes. Why does the poet make the scene so 
brilliant and the heart of the maiden so hopeful and happy? (14) 
Explain lines 868-869. (15) Determine by the rhythm the pronun- 
ciation of the proper names Opeloiisas, line 750; Plaquemine (two 
syllables), line 766; Atchafalaya, line 807; Wachita, line 816. (16) 
Define and give the derivation of sombre, line 752 ; wimpling, line 758 ; 
tenebrous, line 769; cope, line 819; pendulous, line 822; credulous, line 
848. (17) Memorize the description of the mocking-bird. 

Evangeline II, iii 
EXPLANATORY: 

233 : 889. mystic mistletoe. The mistletoe was held sacred by the 
old Druid priests. They cut the mistletoe with a golden knife and 
preserved it with great veneration. See the next line. 

234 : 913. gaiters and doublet. The doublet was a close-fitting 
body garment with sleeves; gaiters were coverings for the legs, usually 
made of leather and fastened at the side. 

234 : 914. sombrero. A broad-brimmed hat, from the Spanish 
sombra, a shade. 

235 : 952. Adayes. An old Spanish settlement near the present 
town of Natchitoches on the Red River. 

235 : 956. Fates. The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, 
were supposed to control the destinies of men. Note that the Fates 
were against Gabriel, but not in the way Basil meant. 

236: 961. Olympus. A mountain in Greece, the abode of the gods. 

236 : 970. ci-devant. A French word meaning former. 



The Notes 573 

237 : 979. illuming. From illume, a poetical form of illumine. 

237 : 984. Natchitoches. Pronounced here in four syllables, but now 
in three. See pronouncing list of proper names, pp. 634-637. 

238 : 1006. a spider . . . in a nutshell. See the reference to this 
superstition in line 285. Do you know of similar superstitious cures 
that are still in use among the negroes and uneducated classes? 

238 : 1009. Creoles. Settlers of French or Spanish descent in lower 
Louisiana. 

239: 1033. Carthusian. An order of monks founded by St. Bruno 
in 1086, in the Chartreuse valley of the Alps. They were noted for 
their austerity, one of their practices being that of maintaining almost 
unbroken silence. 

240 : 1044. Upharsin. "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" were the 
words written upon the wall of Belshazzar's palace by the mysterious 
hand. See Daniel 5:25-28, where the interpretation is given. 

240 : 1057. oracular caverns. An allusion to the famous Pythian 
oracle of Apollo at Delphi; the messages were delivered by a priestess 
from a dark cave or cavern. 

241 : 1063-1064. Prodigal Son . . . Foolish Virgin. Relate these 
parables as told in Luke 15 and Matthew 25. How far may they be 
applied to Gabriel and Evangeline? Why is Father Felician trying 
to be humorous? 

241 : 1075. garrulous. Talkative. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Evangeline is now in Basil's home in Louisiana. The canto 
gives us a picture of luxuriance and plenty similar to and yet different 
from that of Benedict's home in Grand-Pre. Draw out the points of 
similarity and contrast. (2) How is the pathetic revelation of Gabriel's 
departure made? Is there much emotion compressed in Evangeline's 
twice repeated query? (3) How did Basil entertain his guests, and 
why? Has his character changed with his circumstances? (4) Recall 
the previous canto in which Michael the fiddler appeared, and draw 
a comparison of the two scenes. (5) Why does the poet make Evange- 
line steal forth alone into the garden? What thoughts and memories 
were stirring in her mind? (6) What plan for overtaking Gabriel 
was decided upon? Why would it have spoiled the story to have left 
Evangeline behind at Basil's home while the men went to overtake 
Gabriel? (7) Why does Basil jokingly refer to bringing Gabriel back 
to his prison (line 958)? Note a similar effort at humor on the part 
of Father Felician in lines 1 063-1 064. (8) Judging from Basil's de- 
scription in lines 945-952, what effect do you think separation had on 
Gabriel's character? (9) Point out the figures of speech in lines 906- 
911. (10) What play on words is found in line 983? (11) Compare 
the imitative and alliterative effects of line 1019 with those of line 729. 
Which of the two do you think is the better? (12) In line 1025 the sea 
is again referred to. Compare line 729, "Still in her heart she heard 
the funeral dirge of the ocean," and read again lines 5-6, 1398-1399. 
The deep-voiced, melancholy monotone of the ocean is thus made a 
sort of recurring or dominant note throughout the poem. Is this 
artistic? (13) Compare the metaphor in line 1041 with that in lines 
351-352. Which of the two do you think is the more beautiful? 
(14) Explain the figure in lines 1 060-1 061. 



574 American Literary Readings 

Evangeline II, iv 
EXPLANATORY: 

242 : 1082. Oregon . . . Walleway . . . Owyhee. The Oregon 
is now the Columbia River. The branch of the Columbia called the 
Snake is probably here intended; the Walleway and Owyhee are its 
tributaries. 

242: 1083-1084. Wind-river Mountains, etc. These are in western 
Wyoming near Yellowstone Park. The Sweetwater River is in central 
Wyoming. It forms one branch of the Platte River. Nebraska is 
the old name for the Platte. Look up these localities on your map. 

242: 1085. Fontaine-qui-bout. French for "Fountain which boils," 
or boiling spring. There are many hot springs in the Spanish sierras, 
that is, in the mountain ranges in lower Colorado. 

242: 1091. amorphas. The amorpha is a shrub called false indigo, 
or lead plant. It bears large spikes of purple or violet flowers. 

242 : 1095. Ishmael's children. Ishmael was the son of Abraham 
and Hagar and was a wanderer; hence any nomadic tribes, like th? 
Indians, may be called Ishmael's children. 

242: 1 102. anchorite monk. A recluse or hermit. Explain the 
figurative use here. Why is taciturn appropriate? 

243: 1 106. Ozark Mountains. The Ozark Plateau. In southwest 
Missouri and extending through northwest Arkansas. 

243: 1 1 14. Fata Morgana. A mirage observed in Sicily and south- 
ern Italy. 

243 : 1 121. Coureur-des-Bois. See the note on line 705. 

244 : 1 139. Mowis. The legends of Mowis and Lilinau (line 1 145) 
are recorded in Schoolcraft's Algic Researches, the principal sourcebook 
of Longfellow's Hiawatha. 

246: 1 175. Jesuit Mission. There are still many ruins of old 
Jesuit missions in Texas, California, and other western states. The 
one referred to by Longfellow was located perhaps somewhere in 
Arkansas in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. 

246 : 1 182. susurrus. A Latin onomatopoetic word for "whisper." 
It is not a plural form, as the context might lead one to think. 

248: 121 1, mendicant. Begging. The metaphor makes the crows 
the black-robed, begging monks who enter the cornfields as their 
cloisters. 

248 : 12 19. compass-flower. The compass plant is a tall, rough, 
bristly herb of the aster family. The leaves are said to assume a 
vertical position with their edges north and south. Longfellow later 
corrected this passage to "vigorous plant" (line 12 17) and "Herein 
the houseless wild" (line 1220). 

248 : 1226. asphodel flowers . . . nepenthe. The asphodel is » 
species of lily. In Greek mythology it is the flower of the Elysian 
fields where the dead heroes sleep ; nepenthe is an opiate that is supposed 
to make one forget all pain and sorrow. 

249 : 1233. Saginaw River. Locate this in Michigan. 

249: 1 241. Moravian Missions. The Moravians were a mild 
Protestant sect who came from central Europe. They set up " Gnaden- 
hutten," or "Tents of Grace," in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and elsewhere. 

249: 1242. camps . . . of the army. This was about 1776 to 
1 78 1. What army is referred to? 



The Notes 575 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) The opening paragraph of this canto describes what section 
of our country? Do you suppose Gabriel went so far west as this? 
(2) What is the poet's purpose in introducing the Shawnee woman 
What is the effect on EvangeUne of the Indian's tales about phantom 
lovers? (3) Why do you suppose the Indians called the priest "Black 
Robe chief"? (4) When Evangeline reached the Mission, what did 
she hear of Gabriel, and what did she determine to do? (5) Do you 
think by this time she had given up hope of seeing Gabriel? Give a 
quotation to prove your point. (6) How is the slow passage of time 
indicated in the stanza beginning "Slowly, slowly" (line 1207)? (7) 
Explain carefully the extended or Homeric simile in lines 1217-1226. 
(8) Why did Evangeline eventually leave the Mission, and with what 
results? (9) After this last disappointment do you think she heard 
any further rumors of Gabriel? (10) Summarize Evangeline's life 
from this time on. (11) Point out the parallelism and contrast in 
lines 1245-1246. (12) What is foreshadowed or suggested in the 
metaphor of lines 1249-1251? (13) Memorize lines 1217-1226. 

Evangeline II, v 
EXPLANATORY: 

249 : 1252. Delaware's waters. Locate the Delaware River. 

249 : 1253. sylvan . . . Penn. Note the pun on Pennsylvania. 
250: 1256. streets still re-echo the names of the trees. Some of the 

principal streets of Philadelphia are Chestnut, Walnut, Pine, Spruce. 

250 : 1257. Dryads. These were the spirits or nymphs supposed 
to dwell within the trees. 

251 : 1298. a pestilence. This refers to the yeUow-fever epidemic 
of 1793- 

252 : 1308. almshouse. Longfellow said that it would be hard to 
establish the identity of the house. In 1826 he went to Philadelphia 
for a few days. In a letter of 1876 he said, "A great many years ago, 
strolling through the streets of Philadelphia, I passed an old almshouse 
within high brick walls, and with trees growing in its enclosure. The 
quiet and seclusion of the place — 'the reserve,' as your poor woman so 
happily said — impressed me deeply. This was long before the poem 
was written and before I had heard the tradition on which it was 
founded. But remembering the place, I chose it for the final scene." 
Samuel Longfellow's Life of Longfellow, Vol. Ill, p. 259. 

252: 1312. "The poor ye always have with you." Quoted with 
some slight inversion from Mark 14:7. Why the inversion? 

253 : 1326. Christ Church. The Episcopal church still standing 
on Second Street north of Market. Benjamin Franklin is buried in 
this old churchyard. 

253: 1328. Wicaco. An old Swedish settlement near Philadelphia. 

254 '- 1355. with blood had besprinkled its portals. See Exodus 
12:22, and explain the allusion in this and the next line. 

255: 1 38 1 and 1390. Still stands the forest primeval. Compare this 
with the parallel passage This is the forest primeval in lines i and 7 
of the Prelude. What is the purpose of this repetition and parallelism? 



576 American Literary Readings 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Why did Evangeline finally land in Philadelphia? (2) What 
new aspiration now filled her soi:l? Quote a line which sums up her 
new view of life. (3) Tell how she employed her time and what effect 
her presence had on others. (4) What is the value of the pestilence 
in the story? (5) Why do you suppose Gabriel came to such poverty 
in his old age? (6) Why is the Sabbath chosen for the final scene ? 
What was Evangeline's mood? (7) What words did Evangeline utter 
when she recognized Gabriel? How had the poet prepared us for these 
words (see line 1046)? (8) For what do you think Evangeline was so 
thankful (line 1380)? Was her life a failure? (9) What is the chief 
function of the Postlude, or Epilogue, lines 1381-1399? (10) What 
repetitions from the Prelude are found here? Is it artistic for a poem 
to return in the last lines to the point of departure? Why? (11) 
Give in a very few words your honest opinion of the poem as a whole. 
(12) If the yellow-fever epidemic of 1793 (see note on line 1298) is 
the closing year of the action of the poem, how many years have 
transpired since the opening of the story? Make an estimate of 
Evangeline's age at the various stages and thus work out a complete 
time action of the story. . 

A Psalm of Life (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This famous poem was written on July 26, 1838, and first appeared 
anonymously in the Knickerbocker Magazine in October of the same 
year. It at once attracted wide attention. Whittier reviewed it 
enthusiastically in The Freeman, of which he was editor at this time, 
saying, "It is very seldom that we find an article of poetry as full 
of excellent philosophy and common sense . . . These nine simple 
verses are worth more than all the dreams of Shelley, and Keats, and 
Wordsworth. They are alive and vigorous with the spirit of the 
day in which we live — the moral steam enginery of an age of action." 
Literary critics smile to-day at this injudicious and extravagant out- 
burst of the good Quaker poet's, but it was the sincere expression of his 
heart, and his judgment has been confirmed by thousands who have read, 
committed to memory, and found comfort in Longfellow's solemn yet 
optimistic moralizing. It is the poet's expression of the struggles of his 
own heart in a period of depression — that eternal struggle which goes 
on between the conflicting moods of despondency and joy in human life. 

EXPLANATORY: 

256. young man . . . psalmist. The subtitle explains the 
situation. Notice that it is the heart of the young man, that is, the 
better, more hopeful, more joyous nature speaking against the pessi- 
mistic, hopeless philosophy of the psalmist, or poet, in a moment of 
despondency. Longfellow in different moods is both the young man 
and the psalmist. 

256: I. mournful numbers. That is, melancholy or hopeless 
poetry. Numbers is frequently used to signify metrical composition. 
Compare Pope's line, 

"I lispt in numbers, for the numbers came." 

256 : 7. Diist thou art. See Genesis 3:19. 



The Notes " 577 

256 : 13. Art is long. This has been traced back to Hippocrates, 
the ancient Greek physician. The thought recurs in many poems 
in modern Uterature. 

256 : 18. bivouac. A temporary camping-place. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Give the story of the origin of the poem, and show exactly 
what the poet meant to express by it. (2) Why is this, then, a purely 
lyric poem? (3) What is its mood, and in what tone of voice and 
movement should it be read? (4) Paraphrase the thought of the first 
stanza. (5) What great doctrine is expressed in the second stanza? 
(6) What is the pivotal word in the third stanza? In what two other 
stanzas is this word or idea repeated? Is it, then, the key to the 
whole poem? (7) Expound the metaphors in the fourth and fifth 
stanzas. (8) According to the sixth stanza, what is the only time 
we are sure of? (9) Do you admire the extended figure in stanzas 
8 and 9? Why? (10) Select what you think is the best single stanza 
in the poem. (11) In what meter is the poem written? Notice that 
the trochaic rhythm requires feminine rimes, such as numbers — 
slumbers, but in the second and fourth lines of each stanza the final 
unaccented syllable is omitted, so that we have one feminine and one 
masculine rime in each stanza. Is this rime scheme adhered to 
throughout the poem? (12) How many syllables does the rhythm 
require in the words real, funeral, bivouac? (13) In line 4 would the 
rhythm require the emphasis to fall on are or on not? Does the 
rhythm, then, help you to give the correct rhetorical or thought 
stress? (14) Memorize the poem perfectly, and recite it. 



Hymn to the Night (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"Longfellow said that he wrote the poem when sitting at his 
chamber window on a balmy night." — Bronson, American Poems, 
p. 576. Poe made an elaborate analysis of the "Hymn to the Night" 
in a review of Voices of the Night in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, 
February, 1840. Among other things he said, "No poem ever opened 
with a beauty more august. The five first stanzas are nearly perfect — 
by which we mean that they are nearly free from fault, while em- 
bodying a supreme excellence. Had we seen nothing from the pen 
of the poet but these five verses, we should have formed the most 
exaggerated conception of his powers." The poem first apneared in 
Voices of the Night (1839), giving the cue for the title of that volume. 

EXPLANATORY: 

257 : 3. sable. Black ; from the sable, or marten, whose fur is black. 

258: 21. Orestes-like. Orestes was pursued by the Furies because 
he had killed his own mother. Look up the story in a classic mythology. 

258: 22. Descend, etc. "It is not every reader who will here 
understand the poet is invoking Peace to descend through, or by means 
of 'The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, the best-beloved 
Night.' " — Poe, in his review of Voices of the Night, 



578 American Literary Readings 

258 : 23. The welcome, the thrice-prayed for. This is a translation 
of the Greek words used as a headpiece or motto. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Give the lyric impulse of this poem. (2) In what form does 
the poet conceive of night? Is the personification maintained through- 
out the poem? (3) What was the eflfect of the presence of night on 
the poet (stanzas 3 and 4)? (4) What lessons did he draw? (5) 
What appropriateness do you find in the allusion to Orestes? (6) 
Comment on Poe's interpretation of the last stanza (see note on 
line 22). Do you accept this interpretation? Why? (7) Compare 
this poem with "A Psalm of Life." Which of the two do you think 
is more beautiful? More inspiring? More artistic in expression? 
(8) How is the theme of the poem emphasized by the rimes in the 
first three stanzas? (9) Characterize the rhythm and the melody, 
or tone-color, of the poem. 

Maidenhood (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

On the publication of Ballads and Other Poems, Longfellow wrote 
to his father saying, among other things, "I think the last two pieces 
the best, — perhaps as good as anything I have written." These two 
pieces were "Maidenhood" and "Excelsior." 

EXPLANATORY: 

259 : 18. Elysian. Relating to the Greek "Heaven," or place of 
the departed spirits of the heroes. 

259: 21. falcon's shadow. The falcon was a hawk trained to 
catch birds for hunters. 

259 ' 34. Gather, then, each flower that grows. Compare Robert 
Herrick's 

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." 

259 : 36. embalm. Perfume, sweeten. 
259 : 37- lily- Emblem of purity. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) The thought movement of the poem may be summarized thus: 
(a) the picture of maidenhood (stanzas 1-5) ; (b) the query (stanzas 
6-8) ; (c) warning and advice (stanzas 9-16). Give the details brought 
out in the poem under each of these suggested divisions. (2) What 
metaphor is developed in lines 7-15? Why is it a good one? (3) 
Expound the metaphor in lines 31-36. Exactly what does the "tent 
of snows" mean? (4) Interpret literally the thought of lines 37-39. 
(5) Select the one stanza in the poem which you admire most. 

Excelsior (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Late one night Longfellow's eye fell upon a scrap of a New York 
newspaper with an engraving of the state seal on it — ^a shield, with 
a rising sun in the center and the Latin motto Excelsior underneath 



The Notes 579 

it. The picture of the youth in the Alps, climbing higher and ever 
higher and bearing this motto Excelsior upon a pennant, flashed into 
his mind, and he at once wrote the first draft of the poem on the back 
of an old letter. He dated the composition at the end as follows: 
"September 28, 1841. Half past 3 o'clock morning. Now to bed." 
In a letter written later to C. K. Tuckerman, Longfellow gives a full 
analysis of the piece. He said his purpose was "to display, in a 
series of pictures, the life of a man of genius, resisting all temptations, 
laying aside all fears, heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to 
accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior, 'higher.' He passes 
through the Alpine village — through the rough, cold paths of the 
world — where the peasants cannot understand him, and where the 
watchword is an 'unknown tongue.' He disregards the happiness of 
domestic peace and sees the glaciers — his fate — before him. He 
disregards the warning of the old man's wisdom and the fascinations 
of woman's love. He answers to all 'Higher yet!' The monks of 
St. Bernard are the representatives of religious forms and ceremonies, 
and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the sound of his voice, 
telling them there is something higher than forms and ceremonies. 
Filled with these aspirations, he perishes; without having reached the 
perfection he longed for; and the voice heard in the air is the promise 
of immortality and progress ever upward." 

EXPLANATORY: 

261 : 32. Saint Bernard. He founded the Bernardine order of 
Cistercian monks at Clairvaux ir the Alps during the twelfth century. 
Note the reference to the famous St. Bernard dogs in line 36 below. 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

(i) Read carefully the introductory note and make a complete 
outline of the poem by stanzas. (2) What effect has the constant 
repetition of the motto? (3) Which one of the voices was most 
appealing to the youth? Upon what grounds do you base your de- 
cision? (4) How do the warnings in the fourth and sixth stanzas 
prepare us for the catastrophe? (5) What voice speaks last, and 
what is the real import of this voice? (6) Compare the poem with 
Poe's "Eldorado." Which of the two poems best expresses the idea 
of the unattainable ideal? (7) Memorize "Excelsior." 

The Wreck of the Hesperus (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Longfellow was constantly on the lookout for themes suitable 
to his own poetic genius. In his Journal he recorded suggestions 
as they came to him from his reading, conversation, and other sources. 
On December 17, 1839, he recorded the following note: "News of 
shipwrecks horrible on the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore 
near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of wreck. There is a reef called 
Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the 
schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-flower on Black Rock. I must 
write a ballad upon this." About twelve days later he was sitting 
up rather late at night writing a review of Allston's poems, when 
suddenly the idea came to him to write the ballad. He worked rapidly 



s8o 



American Literary Readings 



on it and then went to bed, but he could not sleep, because he kept 
thinking of new stanzas to add to the ballad. He arose and completed 
the poem about three o'clock in the morning, and then went to bed 
and slept soundly. The next morning he recorded this experience in 
his Journal, saying that the poem hardly cost him an effort, as it came 
to him in whole stanzas rather than in single lines. The ballad was 
first published in the New World, January, 1840. 

EXPLANATORY: 

262 : II. flaw. A sudden puff of wind. 

262 : 14. Spanish Main. That part of the Caribbean Sea along 
the northern coast of South America, so called during the early coloni- 
zation periods when the richly laden Spanish merchantmen plied 
between the Old World and the New. This sea was infested with 
pirates, and many tales of sunken ships and buried treasures have 
been told of these stirring times and this romantic region. 

263 : 56. Lake of Galilee. Relate the incident referred to; see 
Matthew 8:23-27. 

264 : 60. Norman's Woe. A dangerous reef off Gloucester harbor 
in Massachusetts. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Relate the story in your own words. (2) What wrenched 
accents peculiar to ballad measures do you note in lines 3, 4, 13, 29? 
(3) What characteristic ballad parallelism and repetition do you find 
in lines 37-48? Point out other examples. (4) What is the char- 
acteristic ballad measure here used? Point out some peculiarities, 
such as extra syllables (lines 3, 7, etc.), omission of words (line 14), 
pleonasm (lines 9, 19), stock expressions (line 13), and the like. (5) 
Of course "The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a literary or imitative 
ballad, and as such, good as it is of its kind, it paks into almost complete 
eclipse when brought into direct comparison with some of the fine 
old English and Scottish popular ballads. Take the following, for 
example, and make a close comparison of it with Longfellow's literary 
ballad : 

Sir Patrick Spence 



The King sits in Dumferling toune. 
Drinking the blude-reid wine; 

O whar will I get guid sail6r, 
To sail this schip of mine? 

Up and spak an eldern Knicht 
Sat at the king's richt knee: 

Sir Patrick Spence is the best sail6r 
That sails upon the se. 

The king has written a braid letter. 
And signd it wi' his hand. 

And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, 
Was walking on the sand. 

The first line that Sir Patrick red, 
A loud lauch lauched he; 

The next line that Sir Patrick red, 
The teir blinded his ee . 



' O wha is this has done this deid, 

This ill deid done to me. 
To send me out this time o' the yeir, 

To sail upon the sel' 

' Mak hast', mak hast', my mirry men all, 
Our guid schip sails the mome.' 

' O say na sae, my master deir. 
For I feir a deadlie storme. 

' Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone, 
Wi' the auld moone in her arme. 

And I feir, I feir, my deir master. 
That we will cum to harme.' 

Our Scots nobles wer richt laith 
To weet their cork-heild shoon, 

Bot lang or a' the play wer playd, 
Thair hats they swam aboone. 



The Notes 581 

I. O lang, lang may their ladies sit, lO. O lang, lang may the ladies stand, 

Wi' thair fans into their hand. Wi' their gold kems in their hair. 

Or e 'ir they sae Sir Patrick Spence * Waiting for thair ain deir lords. 

Cum sailing to the land. For they'll se them na mair. 

II. Half owre, half owre to Aberdour, 
It's fiftie fadom deip, 
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence 
W 'i the Scots lords at his f eit. 

The Arrow and the Song (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

On November 16, 1845, Longfellcw made this note in his Journal: 
"Before church, wrote 'The Arrow and the Song,' which came into 
my mind as I stood with my back to the fire, and glanced on to the 
paper with arrowy speed. Literally an improvisation." It was 
included in The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, which was published 
about a month later. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How is unity of effect obtained in this brief but almost perfect 
lyric? (2) Give the sequence of the thought by stanzas. (3) Work 
out the parallelism of expression in the first and second stanzas. What 
is the purpose of this? (4) How do Longfellow's own songs fulfill the 
condition set forth in the last two lines? (5) How do you like this 
simple stanzaic form? (6) Point out one break in the regularity of 
the rhythm. Is this a blemish? Why? (7) Is unbroke in the last 
stanza correct? Why is it permissible to use such a form here? 

Divina Commedia (Longfellow) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This is the first of the six sonnets, two to each of the three parts, 
which Longfellow attached to his moniunental translation of Dante's 
Divina Commedia. It is in this sonnet that the poet refers most 
touchingly to the burden of the loss of his wife and to the additional 
distress which he felt as the terrible Civil War drew to a close. The 
sonnet was written in April, 1864. 

EXPLANATORY: 

265 : 5. paternoster. The Lord's prayer. 

265 : 9. here. That is, he enters upon the work of his translation 
of Dante. 

265 : 10. leave my burden at the minster gate. His burden was the 
grief over the loss of his wife. Minster is an old word for monastery 
or cathedral. 

265 : 12. tumult of the time. The Civil War (1861-1865). 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Note how the thought of the ordinary worshiper is developed 
in the octave, or first eight lines, and how the application to his own 
life's burden is made in the sextet, or last six lines. Summarize each 
of these divisions in your own words. (2) Read the poem aloud for 
its melody and sonorousness. Select the most musical lines. 



582 American Literary Readings 

Snow-Bound (Whittier) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"Snow-Bound," one of the most perfect rural idyls in the language, 
was first conceived by Whittier about August, 1865, just after the final 
settling of that terrible question of slavery, in which he had taken 
such an active part through his writings. Whittier was then fifty- 
nine years old, and had reached that period in life when the instinct 
for reminiscence is strongest. A few years before, his mother and 
elder sister had died, and just a year before, his younger sister, Eliza- 
beth, had passed away, and the poem is a sort of memorial to them 
and to the household of which they were a part, and of which now 
only the poet and his brother Matthew survived. The poem first 
appeared in a separate volume in 1866, under the management of 
James T. Field, the poet's literary adviser and publisher. Whittier 
explained in a note preceding the poem who the various members 
of the household were, and added this account of his resources: "In 
my boyhood, in our lonely farm house, we had scanty sources of 
information; few books and only a small weekly paper. Our only 
annual was the Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling 
was a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My father 
when a young man had traversed the wilderness to Canada, and 
could tell of his adventures with Indians and wild beasts, and of his 
sojourn in the French villages. My uncle was ready with his record 
of hunting and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories, which 
he at least half believed, of witchcraft and apparitions. My mother, 
who was born in the Indian-haunted region of Somersworth, New 
Hampshire, between Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads 
of the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described 
strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, among whom 
was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my possession the wizard's 
'conjuring book,' which he solemnly opened when consulted. It is 
a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651." Prof. George 
R. Carpenter in his life of Whittier says, "He, this old man who had 
been an East Haverhill boy, describes his homestead, his well curb, 
his brook, his family circle, his schoolmaster, apparently intent on 
naught but the complete accuracy of his narrative, and lo! such is 
his art that he has drawn the one perfect, imperishable picture of 
that bright old winter life in that strange clime. Diaries, journals, 
histories, biographies, and autobiographies, with the same aim in view, 
are not all together so typical as this unique poem of less than a 
thousand lines." 

EXPLANATORY: 

272. Whittier dedicated the poem "To the memory of the house- 
hold it describes." 

272. Cor. Agrippa, Occult Philosophy. See Whittier's reference 
to this old book in the introductory note. 

272 : I. brief. The shortest day in the year occurs when? 

272 : 7. portent. A sign or omen. It is still superstitiously 
believed that if the sun sinks behind a cloud, a storm will follow. 

272 : 13. sharpened. What effect would the cold have on the 
face? Is the adjective suggestive? 

272 : 15. east. That is, from the east. 



The Notes 583 

273 ' 17. felt the strong pulse. The Whittier home was only about 
fifteen miles from the shore. Note the metaphor and personification 
in the line. 

273 : 22. herd's-grass. Timothy hay. 

273 : 25. stanchion. Upright poles with hickory or walnut bows 
attached so as to hold the cattle in the stalls. 

273 : 44. Nature's geometric signs. That is, in regular crystals 
like geometric figures. Look up illustrations of snow crystals and see 
how aptly starry flake, pellicle, etc., apply. 

274 : 62. well-curb. When some western school girls who could 
not understand how a well with a sweep could have a roof wrote to 
Whittier for an explanation, he replied that there was a board laid 
across the curb as a shelf to hold the pail, and the snow made this 
look like a Chinese roof. 

274 : 65. Pisa's leaning miracle. A tower made of pure white 
marble in Pisa, Italy. Its base is 51 feet, and the tower is said to 
lean about 16 feet from its vertical line of 181 feet. It is called a 
miracle because it does not fall, but from a scientific point of view 
it is perfectly safe. Why? 

274 : 70. buskins. Formerly high-heeled boots worn by tragic 
actors, but here simply heavy, high-topped shoes. 

274 ' 77- Aladdin's wondrous cave. Let some one briefly tell the 
story of Aladdin. 

274 : 80. supernal. Heavenly, from above; compare infernal. 

275 : 90. Egypt's Amun. An Egyptian god, frequently repre- 
sented with a ram's head. Also spelled Ammon. 

275 : 97- No church-bell. This seems to indicate that the third 
day of the storm was Sunday. There could be no meeting on such 
a day. 

276 : 136. crane and pendent trammels. The crane was a swinging 
bar of iron put on the side of the fireplace, and the trammels were 
hooks on which cooking utensils were hung. What does pendent mean? 

276 : 137. Turks' heads. The smooth tops of the andirons were 
imitations of the Turkish fez. 

276 : 142. witches . . . tea. "When you see the fire on the 
hearth reflected outside, the witches are making their tea. It is 
dangerous to go out of doors then, and to stand in the reflection of 
the fire will bewitch you." Daniels and Stephens, Encyclopedia of 
Superstitions. 

277 : 156. clean-winged. Swept clean, as with a turkey- wing 
duster. 

277 : 183. brother. His younger brother, Matthew, died 1883, 
nine years before the poet's death. 

278 : 204. The stars shine through his cypress-trees. The star is 
the emblem of hope; the cypress, of death and mourning. Explain 
the metaphor. 

278 : 206. breaking day . . . mournful marbles. The resurrec- 
tion day breaking over the marble gravestones. 

278: 211. And Love can never lose its own. Compare Tennyson's 

" ' T is better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 

278: 215. "The Chief of Gambia's golden shore." The third stanza 
of Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton's poem "The African Chief" begins 
"A chief of Gambia's golden shore." Gambia is a district in West 



584 American Literary Readings 

Africa from which slaves were taken. The lines quoted by Whittier 
below (lines 220-223) form the fourth stanza of Mrs. Morton's poem. 
The poet may have learned the piece from Bingham's American 
Preceptor (181 3) where it appeared among other selections for dec- 
lamation. In later editions of "Snow-Bound" Whittier substituted for 
the lines referring to Dame Mercy Warren the following : 

As if a far-blown trumpet stirred 
The languorous sin-sick air, I heard: 

279 : 225. Meniphremagog. A lake on the border between Ver- 
mont and Canada. St. Frangois (line 229) is a river in Quebec; 
Salisbury (line 237) is in northeastern Massachusetts; Boar's Head 
(line 242) and the Isles of Shoals (line 243) are along the New Hamp- 
shire coast just north of Salisbury. 

279 : 226. moose and samp. Moose meat and a sort of porridge 
made of Indian corn. 

279 : 231. Norman cap and bodiced zone. The dress of the Ca- 
nadian settlers who came from Normandy, France. See Evangeline, 
lines 39-40. 

279 : 244. hake-broil. Hake is a kind of salt-water fish. 

280 : 259. Cochecho. Indian name for Dover, New Hampshire. 
It is near the Piscataqua River. 

280 : 270. gray wizard's conjuring-book. See the introductory 
note with quotation from Whittier. 

280 : 272. Piscataqua. A river in Maine. Pronounced pis-cat'd- 
kwa here. Why? 

280 : 286. painful SewelVs ancient tome. The ancient volume of 
painstaking Sewell, the author of a history of the Quakers. 

280 : 289. Chalkley's Journal. Thomas Chalkley was a traveling 
Quaker preacher. The story repeated in the text is substantially 
the same as related in the Journal. 

281 : 305. tangled ram, etc. Relate the story as told in Genesis 22. 
281 : 307. innocent. Lacking in knowledge. The uncle was 

Moses Whittier, an old bachelor. 

281 : 310. lyceum. Originally a grove in which Aristotle taught; 
hence any school or instructive course of lectures. Properly accented 
on the second syllable, but here on the first to meet the requirements 
of the rhythm. Scan the line. 

281 : 313. divine. Find out, predict. 

281 : 315. cunning-warded. A ward is a notch on a key to allow 
it to pass an obstruction in the lock ; hence cunning-warded here means 
cunningly or nicely adjusted or fitted to unlock the mysteries of nattire. 

281 : 320. Apollonius. A Greek philosopher of the first century 
who was said to know all languages by instinct, even those of animals 
and birds. 

281 : 322. Hermes. The Egyptian god Thoth, whom the Greeks 
called Hermes Trismegistus, the god of all wisdom. He is usually 
represented in figures as having the bill of an ibis, the sacred bird 
of the Egyptians, "the sage cranes of Nilus" referred to in the text. 

282 : 332. White of Selborne. Gilbert White, an Englishman who 
recorded so faithfully "The Natural History and Antiquities of Sel- 
borne" that his book has become a classic in English literature. 

282 : 350. the dear aunt. Mercy Hussey, sister of Mrs. Whittier. 

283 : 361. huskings. Read Whittier 's "The Huskers" with the 
"Corn Song" which follows. 



The Notes 585 

283 : 369. mirage. An illusion; pronounced mir azh', though 
Whittier probably called it mir'age to fit the rhythm. In Pickard's 
life of Whittier the story is told that late one night the young girl 
saw an image of her lover on horseback approaching the home. When 
she opened the door, nothing was there. Shortly afterwards she 
heard that her lover had died in New York at exactly the same hour 
as that in which she had seen the apparition. This is evidently the 
"mirage that loomed across her way." 

283 : 378. elder sister. Mary, who afterwards ■ married Jacob 
Caldwell of Haverhill. She died in i860. 

284: 396. Our youngest. Elizabeth; she never married, but lived 
with her brother and devoted herself to his interests until her death 
in 1864. Like him she had a poetical gift and several of her poems 
have been preserved. The tribute the poet makes to her is perhaps 
the finest piece of poetry he ever composed. 

285 : 438. Brisk wielder of the birch and rule. The teacher's name 
was George Haskell. 

285 : 444. mitten-hlinded. That is, he blinded the cat by drawing 
a mitten over its head. 

285 : -447. Dartmouth's college halls. Located at Hanover, New 
Hampshire. 

286 : 476. Pindus-born A raxes. The Arachthus (Araxes) River 
rises in the Pindus Mountains in Greece. 

286 : 483. hostage . . . took. That is, his knowledge of the 
past gave him an advantage in discerning the trend of future events. 

287 : 510. Another guest. Harriet Livermore, of New Hampshire. 
She was a brilliant woman, but eccentric and quick tempered. She 
believed that the time of the second coming of Christ to the earth 
was at hand, and so she went to Asia and lived for a while on Mount 
Lebanon with another religious enthusiast, Lady Hester Stanhope, 
referred to in line 555 as the crazy Queen of Lebanon. 

287 : 523. pard-like. Leopard-like; pard is used only in poetry. 

288 : 536. Petruchio's Kate. Petruchio was the man who tamed 
Katherine, the high-tempered heroine of Shakespeare's The Taming 
of the Shrew. 

288 : 537. Siena's saint. Saint Catherine of Siena, Italy, noted 
for her mildness and charity. She made a vow of silence for tnree 
years. Note how the two contrasted Catherines are combined in 
Miss Livermore. 

288 : 555. crazy Queen of Lebanon. See note on line 510. 

288 : 568. fatal sisters. The three fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and 
Atropos. 

291 : 656. Eden. Consult Genesis 2 and 3. 

291 : 659. wise old Doctor. Dr. Elias Weld of Rocks Village near 
East Haverhill. 

291 : 668. inward light. The conscience. The Quaker matron, 
Mrs. Abigail Whittier, professed to follow the inward light, while 
Dr. Weld, a Presbyterian or Calvinist, subscribed to a stricter creed. 
Note the metaphor in mail. 

292 : 683. Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse. Thomas Ellwood, a 
Quaker poet, wrote a long epic on King David. Ellwood's muse 
Whittier humorously calls a stranger to the nine Greek or classic 
Muses, and he dubs it "drab-skirted" in humorous allusion to the 
plain gray garb of the Quakers. 



586 American Literary Readings 

292 : 693. painted Creeks. The Creek Indians later were removed 
from Georgia to the Indian Territory. 

292 : 694. daft McGregor. Sir George McGregor, a Scotchman, 
attempted to form a colony in Porto Rico in 1822. This allusion 
and the one preceding give us a hint of the exact time Whittier had 
in mind for his reminiscent picture. He would himself have been 
about fifteen at this time. 

292 : 696. Taygetos, etc. A mountain range in Greece; the Greek 
patriot Ypsilanti led his soldiers, who came from the district of Maina, 
against the Turks in the struggle for Greek independence. 

292: 700. Its corner for the rustic Muse. Whittier's first published 
poem appeared in just such a poets' corner. 

293 : 715. Angel of the backward look. Memory. 

293 : 719. weird palimpsest. Strange parchment, which could be 
written on after the previous writing had been erased. How does 
the figure apply? 

293 : 727. mournful cypresses. Why mournful? See line 204 and 
the note on it. 

293:728. amaranths. A flower supposed never to fade ; symbolic 
of immortality. 

293 : 730. restless sands. In the hour-glass of time. 

293 : 739- century's aloe. The American aloe, or century plant, a 
large spear-leafed shrub of the southwestern United States and Mexico. 
It was formerly supposed to flower only once in a century. Whittier 
here refers to the close of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, 
the last being the finest achievement of the first century of American 
history. 

293 ' 741. Truce of God. An agreement of the eleventh century 
forbidding all fighting for a time so that the laborers could till the 
fields. 

294 : 747. Flemish pictures. The Flemish school of painters were 
noted for brilliant coloring and sympathetic treatment of humble 
interiors, 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

General, (i) Why is this poem called an idyl? What is the 
general nature of the theme and material introduced? (2) In what 
mood and from what point of view is the material treated? Notice 
how the poet indicates the change of point of view in the reflective 
passages (lines 179, 386, 400, 485) and in the conclusion (line 715). 
Note also how at the end of these reflective passages the reader is 
distinctly brought back to the original point of view. (3) Is the 
poem narrative or lyric in its general effect? Explain. (4) Divide 
the poem into four large sections showing the general structure of the 
whole composition, and give an appropriate title for each division. 
(Hint: Keep the central idea, namely, snow-bound, in mind, and note 
how we have before, during, and after sections, with a conclusion. 
Lines 116, 629, 715 are good dividing points.) (5) Now take these 
larger divisions and fill in the details so as to make a complete outline 
of about one full page. You will notice that at various points the poet 
interjects his own reflections on suggested topics, such as his thoughts 
on time and immortality (lines 1 79-2 11), vision of a lost loved one 
and thoughts on death (lines 400-437), education (lines 485-509), 
judging others (lines 565-589). These grow naturally out of the 



The Notes 587 

subject-matter and should be duly recorded in the outline. (6) Work 
out a complete time scheme for the poem, beginning on a Friday 
morning late in December and running over to the next Friday. Con- 
sult lines I, 32, 42, 47, 116, 629, 674. Be careful to determine whether 
lines 42 and 47 indicate the same or separate mornings. (7) In 
which is the poet more interested, the incidents or the characters? 
(8) How does he blend the setting, the characters, and the movement 
or action of the piece so as to give unity of effect? (9) What is the 
prevailing or dominant tone of the composition? (10) Why do you 
think the poet was able to draw such accurate portraits of the char- 
acters? Compare these with purely imaginary characters, like those 
in Longfellow's Evangeline, for example. (11) In what meter is the 
poem written? Scan lines 19 to 30, noting inversions, hovering or 
divided stresses, slurred or extra syllables, and the like. (12) The 
usual couplet rime is sometimes varied into alternate or inclosed 
rimes. Point out some of these. (13) Do you note many wrenched or 
slightly untrue rimes, such as pellicle — fell, lines 45-46; dumb — lyceum, 
lines 309-310; on — sun, lines 41-42; intense — elemeyits, lines loo-ioi? 
How would hearth, line 106, be pronounced? Piscataqua, line 272? 
memories, line 360? Are these blemishes, or merely licenses? (14) 
Suggested memory passages: lines 155-174; 203-211 ; 394-437; 485-509; 
647-^656; 715-728. (15) Suggested subjects for compositions: The 
Inmates of Whittier's Early Home; A Contrast of "Snow-Bound" 
with Burns's "The Cotter's Saturday Night," or Goldsmith's "The 
Deserted Village"; Figures of Speech in "Snow-Bound"; Whittier's 
Power as a Portrayer of Characters; The Chief Values Derived from 
Studying "Snow-Bound"; A Winter Day in My Own Home. 

Specific. (l) What peculiar weather signs are given as presaging 
a storm? Can you give similar local weather signs? (2) Summarize 
the "nightly chores," and compare them with your own. (3) Explain 
the implied metaphor in lines 29-30. Is it humorous in effect? (4) 
Compare lines 33-40 with the stanza from Emerson's "The Snow- 
storm," which Whittier quotes at the head of "Snow-Bound." 
(5) Describe some of the transformed objects around the home (lines 
54-65), explaining some of the allusions. (6) To what place and 
why was it necessary to dig a path? (7) Describe the appearance 
and action of the animals after the storm. (8) Compare Whittier's 
brief description of the frozen brook (lines 110-115) with Lowell's 
extended description in the first Prelude of "The Vision of Sir 
Launfal." (9) What effect has the evening fire on the scene? (10) 
Describe the picture around the hearth (lines 155-174). (11) Enumer- 
ate the evening entertainments (lines 211-215). (12) Do you suppose 
the father and mother told all of their experiences in one evening, or 
is the poet here condensing the narratives of many days into one? 
This is called the poet's power of universal compression or condensa- 
tion: Compare Milton's U Allegro and II Pe^iseroso for similar con- 
densation. (13) Refer to the notes and explain the allusions in the 
father's and the mother's recital. (14) Give an oral sketch of Uncle 
Moses Whittier. Do you think he was a good story-teller? (15) 
What aunt is referred to? Explain the reference in line 369. (16) 
Compare the metaphor in lines 390-391 with Shakespeare's "That 
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns." (17) 
Explain just what the poet meant in lines 392-394. Why does the 
memory of the younger sister call forth such tender reveries from the 



588 American Literary Readings 

poet? (i8) Why are the birch and rule mentioned in line 438? (19) 
Compare this schoolmaster with the one in Goldsmith's "The Deserted 
Village." Which portrait do you prefer? (20) Tell the story of the 
other guest (lines 510 ff). (21) What does the poet describe after he 
finishes with the portraits? (22) Read aloud the description of sleep 
(lines 622-628) and comment on the happy way in which the poet 
suggests by his language the very thing he is describing. (23) On the 
morning of the fourth day (line 629) what distinct change takes place 
in the situation of the snow-bound household? (24) Visualize the 
picture described in lines 650-656, and explain just what is meant by 
"the charm which Eden never lost." (25) What is meant by the 
"Quaker matron's inward light" and the Doctor's "mail of Calvin's 
creed"? (26) Explain the metaphor in lines 672-673. (27) How did 
the family spend the later days of their enforced imprisonment? (28) 
What do the allusions in the village paper help us to determine? See 
the notes above. (29) Read and expound the magnificent apostrophe 
to memory beginning with line 715 and forming the conclusion to this 
reminiscent idyl. (30) What event is referred to in line 739? (31) 
How does the poet appeal to his old friends (line 745) and how does 
he express his gratitude to his new friends, the readers whom he has 
never seen? Is this a happy concluding thought? 

Ichabod (Whittier) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

This famous poem was first published at Washington City on May 2, 
1850, in the National Era, an anti-slavery organ of which Whittier 
was an assistant or corresponding editor. Daniel Webster, the dis- 
tinguished Massachusetts senator, had been regarded as the leader of 
the doctrine of unionism as opposed to states' rights; but when the 
Fugitive Slave Law was proposed, Webster took a conservative and 
conciliatory attitude and supported the measure, thus drawing upon 
himself a storm of protest from the anti-slavery party of the North. 
Whittier voiced his own and his party's feelings in this remarkable 
poem. In an introductory note written later, he declared that when 
he read the speech in which Webster supported Clay's compromise 
measure and saw clearly the sure results which would follow, he uttered 
his rebuke more in sorrow than in anger. Later in his life, feeling that 
he owed some reparation to the great statesman whose action he 
had so signally rebuked, and feeling also, as Professor Carpenter sug- 
gests, that perhaps Webster was right after all, Whittier wrote "The 
Lost Occasion," in which he gave a fine portrait of Webster and ex- 
pressed a profound regret that the great man had not lived to become 
a leader for liberty and union in the final struggle between the states. 
Professor Carpenter remarks that the verses are, in their awful scorn, 
the most powerful that Whittier ever wrote, and Francis H. Under- 
wood in speaking of "Ichabod" in his Life of Whittier, says, "It 
contains more storage of electric energy than anything we remember 
in our time." 

EXPLANATORY: 

294. Ichabod. The meaning of the Hebrew name is "the glory 
has departed." vSee I Samuel 4:21. 



The Notes 589 

294 ' 3- ^''(ly hairs. Webster was then sixty-eight years old, and 
two years later he died, October 24, 1852. 

295 • 35- Walk backivard, etc. This is a veiled allusion to the 
incident recorded in Genesis 9:21-27, a part of which reads: "Shem 
and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and 
went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their 
faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness." 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Recall the historical occasion which produced this poem. (Look 
up Clay's Compromise Bill of 1850 and ascertain Webster's part in 
it.) (2) Explain the meaning of the title of the poem. (3) Whittier 
says that scorn and wrath with attendant revilings and insults are 
out of place in contemplating Webster's action. What emotion is 
it, then, that he feels and expresses in the poem?. (4) Do you think 
there is after all a sort of suppressed and dignified scorn beneath the 
feeling of regret and sorrow which the poet voices? (5) Point out 
the single stanza which you think is most powerful and stinging in 
its rebuke. (6) Do you think that this is a mere occasional poem, 
that is, the expression of a mere passing emotion due to the incident 
described? What gives the poem its real, lasting quality? (7) In 
what meter is the poem written? Do you like the peculiar effect of 
the short lines alternating with the longer ones? (8) Compare "Ich- 
abod" with Browning's "The Lost Leader." 



Skipper Ireson's Ride (Whittier) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This ballad first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, December, 
1857. James Russell Lowell, who was editor of the Atlantic at the 
time, suggested the dialect refrain for the sake of local color, an evident 
improvement. Whittier accepted the change for all the stanzas in 
which the women are supposed to speak. The incident on which 
the ballad is based came to Whittier through the refrain of an old 
song which he learned from a Haverhill Academy schoolmate who 
came from Marblehead. It is said that the skipper was really not so 
much to be blamed as his crew for deserting the sinking ship; but 
Whittier said that he drew the material of his ballad wholly from 
fancy, and we may add that whatever the facts in the case may be, 
the underlying truth of the ballad — namely, righteous indignation 
against cowardly action for selfish motives — remains universal in its 
appeal. 

EXPLANATORY: 

296 : 3. Apuleius's Golden Ass. Apuleius was a Platonic philoso- 
pher of the second century who wrote a romance in which the principal 
character is turned by magic into an ass. The allusion is not quite 
apropos. 

296 : 4. one-eyed Calender's horse of brass. This is a reference to 
the third royal mendicant, or calender, one of three traveling der- 
vishes who related their adventures in the Arabian Nights. Each of 
the three told of the strange manner in which he had lost his left eye. 



590 American Literary Readings 

The third one tells of a horse of brass on the top of a lodestone moun- 
tain, but he did not ride this horse. He merely shot it from its pedestal 
and caused it to sink into the sea. Later on in his adventures he 
mounted a wonderful black horse which presently spread a pair of 
wings and bore him swiftly through the air. As it deposited him on 
the top of a castle, it switched out the mendicant's left eye with a 
violent blow of its tail. Whittier probably had another Arabian 
Nights story, that of the wonderful magic horse of ivory and ebony, 
confused with the reference to the brass horse in the third calender's 
tale. 

296 : 6. Islam's prophet. Mohammed, the founder of Islamism. 

296 : 6. Al-Bordk. This was the name of the white mule with a 
man's face, a horse's cheeks, and an eagle's wings, on which Mohammed 
rode through the air to the Holy City. 

296 : 8. Marblehead. A rough seaport town near Salem, Massa- 
chusetts. 

297 : 26. Bacchus. The god of wine. Note the appropriateness 
of the allusion. 

297: 30. Mcenads. These were the frenzied female worshipers of 
Bacchus; also called Bacchantes. 

297: 35- Chaleur Bay. A part of the Gulf of St. Lawrence between 
Quebec and New Brunswick. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Why is the poem called a ballad? (2) Tell the story in your 
own words. (3) Construct an outline showing by stanzas the intro- 
duction, description of the skipper in the hands of the mob of women, 
the cause of their vengeance, the ride through Marblehead and the 
surrounding country, the repentance, and the dismissal of the culprit. 
(4) Is the narrative naturally told, logical, effective? (5) In what 
time of the year was the ride made? (6) How does the poet manage 
to make the scene comical and at the same time tragic and pathetic? 
(7) Can you see the skipper and his tormentors clearly? How does 
the poet manage this? (8) What motive for the skipper's desertion 
of the distressed ship is hinted at in line 40? (9) Why is the metaphor 
in line 61 appropriate? (10) Why is the skipper described as looking 
like an Indian idol (line 72)? Does Indian refer to American Indians 
or to East India? (11) How is the note of pathos touched in the 
last stanza? (12) Study the refrain throughout the poem. What 
is the effect of its repetition in dialect? 

In School-Days (Whittier) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem was first published in Our Young People, January, 1870, 
under the editorship of Lucy Larcom. She had asked Whittier to 
write some verses to print under certain pictures; he replied that he 
could not do that but she might print "In School-Days" if she did not 
think it "too spooney for a grave Quaker like myself." S. T. Pickard, 
Whittier's biographer, says that the little girl referred to was Lydia 
Ayer, daughter of the poet's nearest neighbor, who died when she was 
fourteen. Oliver Wendell Holmes in writing to Whittier in 1878 said 
of this poem, "Let me say to you unhesitatingly that you have written 



The Notes 591 

the most beautiful school-boy poem in the English language." We 
can readily agree with Holmes that the naturalness, simplicity, sweet- 
ness, and sincerity of school-boy and school-girl life were never more 
satisfactorily presented. 

EXPLANATORY: 

299 : II. creeping slow to school. Suggested by Shakespeare's 

"And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel 
And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwilling to school." As You Like It, II: vii. 

299 : 16. icy fretting. That is, the sun lit up the icy fretwork, or 
icicles, on the eaves. 

300 : 37. Still. Is this an adjective or an adverb? 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) This little poem tells a story, but it is a reminiscent lyric rather 
than a ballad or narrative poem. Its purpose is to re-create an emo- 
tional moment in the boy's life — one of the sweetest moments that 
ever come to youth, the moment in which love first blossoms in all its 
glory. Show just how the poet manages to catch and preserve this 
emotional moment. (2) In what stanzas is the background or setting 
presented? Is it a lifelike picture of the old country schoolhouse? 
Can you create a similar one out of your own experiences? (3) How 
is the evening sunlight used to beautify the scene? (4) Does the poet 
successfully express the bashfulness of the two in the seventh stanza? 
(5) In what stanza is the emotional climax reached? (6) How is the 
tone chastened and subdued in the last two stanzas? (7) What figure 
of speech is effectively used in the first stanza? (8) Determine the 
meter and rhythm of the poem. (9) Is the feminine rime organic, 
that is, is it preserved without variation throughout the poern? What 
effect has the use of the feminine rimes on the musical quality of the 
lyric? (10) By what rime repetition is the main thought or point 
of the poem emphasized? 

The Last Leaf (Hohnes) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"The Last Leaf" was written some time in 1831 or 1832, and first 
printed in The Harbinger, 1833. In a later prefatory note Holmes 
said: "This poem was suggested by the appearance in one of our 
streets of a venerable rehc of the Revolution (Major Thomas Melville), 
said to be one of the party who threw the tea overboard in Boston 
Harbor. He was a fine monumental specimen in his cocked hat and 
knee breeches, with his budded shoes and his sturdy cane. The 
smile with which I, as a young man, greeted him, meant no disrespect 
to an honored fellow-citizen whose costume was out of date, but 
whose patriotism never changed with years. I do not recall any 
earlier example of this form of verse, which was commended by the 
fastidious Edgar Allan Poe, who made a copy of the whole poem which 
I have in his own handwriting. Good Abraham Lincoln had a great 
liking for the poem, and repeated it from memory to Governor Andrew, 
as the governor himself told me." 

John T. Morse, Jr., the biographer of Holmes, believed that "The 
Last Leaf" would outlive "The Chambered Nautilus." "Is there 



592 American Literary Readings 

in all literature a lyric in which drollery, passing nigh into ridicule 
yet stopping short of it, and sentiment becoming pathos yet not too 
profound, are so exquisitely intermingled as in 'The Last Leaf? To 
spill into the mixture the tiniest fraction of a drop too much of either 
ingredient was to ruin all. How skillfully, how daintily, how un- 
erringly, Dr. Holmes compounded it, all readers of English know well. 
It was a light and trifling bit, if you will; but how often has it made 
the smile and the tear dispute for mastery in a rivalry which is never 
quite decided!" 

EXPLANATORY: 

307 : II. Crier. The town crier was an officer whose duty it was 
to make public proclamations of sales, orders of court, and the like. 

307: 15. Sad and wan. Holmes first wrote this "So forlorn," 
but being criticized for the bad rime, he adopted the change suggested 
by Mrs. Charles Folsom. 

308 : 43. if I should live to be the last leaf. Holmes did actually 
outlive practically all of his early contemporaries. 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

(i) Visualize the picture of the old man as he was and as he is. 
(2) What is the efifect of the memories of buried loved ones in the 
fourth stanza? Do you see the appropriateness of the adjective 
mossy? (3) Why does the poet mention his grandmother only to 
announce that she died long ago? (4) What ludicrous images are 
developed in stanzas 6 and 7? (5) How does the poet make the 
application of the thought of the poem in the last stanza? (6) Read 
the introductory note and point out specific instances of the blending 
of pathos and humor, which is the chief charm of the poem. (7) 
Would you class this as a serious or a humorous lyric, or both? (8) 
Study the structure of the stanza. Notice the frequent occurrence of 
anapestic feet in the iambic rhythm of the longer lines. The short 
lines are uniformly one anapestic foot, and the trimeter, or three- 
stressed lines, usually open with an anapest. The two short lines 
with answering rime make what is called "tail-rime." Scan the 
second and last stanzas. 

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Holmes) 

Section IV 
INTRODUCTORY: 

The first number of the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1857, 
contained the first instalment of The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: 
Or Every Man His Own Boswell. The opening words were, "I was 
just going to say, when I was interrupted." This interruption Holmes 
explains by reminding his readers that just twenty-five years before 
in the New England Magazine he had written two chatty papers under 
the title he now resumed in the Atlantic Monthly. The papers continued 
through twelve numbers, and were the life of the new magazine. 
When the work was published in book form, it was recognized as 
an original and permanent contribution to our literature. 

In the February (1858) number of the Atlantic the fourth paper, 
containing "The Chambered Nautilus," appeared. The poem was 
everywhere greeted with applause. Whittier said upon reading it 



The Notes 593 

that it was booked for immortality. Holmes preferred it above all 
his other productions, and it has undoubtedly been more frequently 
quoted than anything else the genial "Autocrat" wrote. 

EXPLANATORY: 

309 : 36. Lochiel. Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, a Scotch clan 
leader, called "The Black," and noted for his unrelenting treatment 
of his enemies in the war of the Highlands. 

309 : 40. Wellington. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, de- 
feated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. He was called "the iron Duke." 

310 : 47-60. Jargonelles . . . Winter-Nelis . . . Saint-Germain 
. . . Early- Catherine . . . Easter-Beurre. Varieties of pears. 

310 : 78. polyphl(Bsh(Ban. Loud- roaring ; a Homeric epithet for 
the ocean. 

311 : 86. Sir Isaac. Sir Isaac Newton, the great English scientist, 
discoverer of the law of gravity, etc. The quotation referred to is, 
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I 
seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore and diverting 
myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell 
than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay -all undiscovered 
before me." 

312: 121. harlequin. A fantastically dressed person whose business 
is to afford amusement. In the space indicated by the dots above, 
the correspondent is supposed to compliment the poet and ask for 
his autograph. 

312 : 136. Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural. William R. Blake was an 
excellent actor, especially of old men's parts. His best character 
was Jesse Rural, the simple-hearted old clergyman in Dion Boucicault's 
Old Heads and Young Hearts. 

313 : 154. Sidney Smith. An English clergyman and humorist, 
one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review. 

313: 157. The "Quarterly . . . tartarly." An allusion to the 6o« 
mot attributed to Byron anent the report that the poet John Keats 
died from grief over the severe criticism of his works in the Quarterly 
Review. 

"Who killed Johny Keats?" 
"I," said the Quarterly, 
So savage and tartarly, 
" I killed Johny Keats." 

313: 168. Bob Logic. The Oxonian, a light-headed dandy and wit 
in Pierce Egan's "Life in London," an extravaganza with elaborate 
drawings by Cruikshank. 

313 : 172. Paul Pry's umbrella. Paul Pry, the title character in 
an English comedy by John Poole, is represented as a meddlesome 
busybody, always prying into other people's business. He usually 
carried a big umbrella. 

314 : 187. Aristophanes. A Greek comedy writer of the fourth 
century B.C. 

314 : 211. Sir Thomas Broivne. An English physician and noted 
prose writer, author of Urn Burial, Religio Medici, etc. The passage 
quoted is from the last-named work. 

316 : 265. Derby. The famous English horse race held at Epsom, 
in Surrey; named from its founder the Twelfth Earl of Derby (pro- 
nounced dar'M). 

20 



594 American Literary Readings 

316 : 272. "Hunc lapidem," etc. "This stone placed here by his 
sorrowing companions." 

316 : 275. eau lustrale. Lustral water; used in the ceremony of 
purification. 

316 : 285. arcus senilis. Arc of old age; a disease of the eye in 
old age, by which the edge of the cornea becomes opaque. Note 
Holmes's use of medical terms and illustrations here and there. 

317: 324. a flower or a leaf. Wordsworth wrote several poems on 
the daisy, one of them in particular being full of similitudes. Com- 
pare also Burns's "To a Mountain Daisy." 

318 : 333. Roget's Bridge-water Treatise. Peter Mark Roget, an 
English physician and writer, was awarded one of the prizes in the 
Earl of Bridgewater's foundation for research in the physical sciences. 

318: 339. unshadowed main. The ocean without a shadow either 
of a cloud or of a sail. 

318: 341. purpledwings. The nautilus was popularly supposed to 
have a sort of gauze-like pair of projections to act as sails. 

318 : 342. Siren. One of the three sea-nymphs, half women and 
half birds, who by their singing enticed sailors to destruction on their 
island. See the story in Homer's Odyssey. 

318 : 351. i'rised ceiling. The inside of the shell is rainbow- 
colored. Iris was the goddess of the rainbow. 

318 : 355. left the past year's dwelling. See Holmes's explanation 
above, lines 349-353. 

319 : 363. Triton. Son of Neptune; herald of the sea. He is 
represented as blowing a spiral conch-shell as a trumpet. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Imagine the breakfast table of a boarding-house, with various 
types of characters, such as the widowed landlady and her son Ben- 
jamin Franklin, the divinity student, the timid school-mistress, the 
angular female dressed in bombazine, and the incorrigible young man, 
John. Note the frequent use of the dash, especially at the beginning 
of paragraphs. This indicates some interruption in the Autocrat's 
talk. Sometimes it is a remark by some one of the boarders, not 
recorded but clearly implied, and sometimes it is a parenthetical or 
bracketed side remark of the Autocrat's for the reader's benefit. 
Note other evidences of the conversational or monologue style. (2) 
What is the first analogy suggested, and how is it developed through 
the first three paragraphs? (3) What compliment is implied in the 
speech of the divinity student, and how does the Autocrat show his 
gratitude? (4) What is the effect of the Autocrat's comparison of 
the student's head to an egg? (5) How does the Autocrat turn the 
student's remark so as to lead up to another analogy? (6) Explain 
the remarks of the Autocrat on the pebble, and comment on the 
figure in the last one, beginning "throne," etc. (7) What effect was 
produced upon the divinity student by the statement concerning the 
number of analogies in the universe? (Note that the effect is stated 
in another amusing figure or analogy.) (8) What is the purpose of 
all these analogies? (9) What new topic does the Autocrat advance 
in the section beginning "I know well enough"? Has he forgotten 
his general topic of analogies, or will he come back to it? (10) Are 
the Autocrat's remarks about the humorous literary man true? Can 
you give an example in your own community of a joker who finds it 



The Notes 595 

hard to get himself taken seriously? (11) What remark do you 
imagine provoked the Autocrat's reply "Oh, indeed no!"? Do you 
find in this paragraph evidences of Holmes's dislike of Puritanism in 
its extreme forms? (12) How does the Autocrat manage to get back 
to his original topic of analogies? (See the quotation from Sir Thomas 
Browne.) (13) What does Holmes mean by "every now and then 
we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string tied to him"? 
By "the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of 
diamonds stuck in it"? By "grow we must, if we outgrow all that 
we love"? (14) The comparisons of life to a sea voyage and a race 
are almost as old as literature itself; how does Holmes manage to make 
these old figures fresh and suggestive? (15) Notice the skill with 
which the Autocrat introduces his last figure — the one for which he 
has all along been preparing. In what form does it appear? Show 
how he really explains the poem before he reads it. 

SPECIAL QUESTIONS ON "THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS" 
(i) Point out the topic of each stanza and thus make an outline 
of the poem. (Remember that the "wrecked" shell before the poet 
is the lyrical stimulus, and hence the poem is built entirely around this 
object.) (2) Compare the analogy developed in the poem with some 
of those previously presented. Is this one so old or trite as those 
previously introduced? (3) What are some of the effects on the 
imagination and emotional nature as you read? (4) Holmes said of 
"The Chambered Nautilus": "In writing the poem I was filled with 
a better feeling — the highest state of mental exaltation and the most 
crystalline clairvoyance, as it seemed to me, that had ever been granted 
me — I mean that lucid vision of one's thought, and of all forms of 
expression which will be at once precise and musical, which is the 
poet's special gift, however large or small in amount or value." Can 
you see evidences of this exalted state of mind and this absolute com- 
mand of language in the poem? (5) The stanza is an original one in 
its form. It is composed in iambic rhythm with lines of varying length, 
ranging from three (lines 2, 3, 6) to five (lines i, 4, 5) and six (line 7) 
stresses or feet to the line. Show what lines rime and see if the model 
is consistently followed in all of the five stanzas. (6) Memorize the 
poem — if not the whole of it, by all means the last stanza. 

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (Holmes) 

Section XI 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"The Deacon's Masterpiece: or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" 
has usually been accepted simply as an example of Holmes's excellent 
Yankee humor, and there is nothing in the text or its setting to show 
that he intended it as anything else. Some have even gone so far as 
to point out Deacon David Holmes, one of the poet's ancestors, as 
the original "Deacon" who built the wonderful chaise. But Pro- 
fessor Barrett Wendell in his chapter on Jonathan Edwards in A 
Literary History of America says, "Often misunderstood, generally 
thought no more than a piece of comic extravagance. Dr. Holmes's 
'One-Hoss Shay' is really among the most pitiless satires in our 
language. Born and bred a Calvinist, Holmes, who lived in the full 
tide of Unitarian hopefulness, recoiled from the appalling doctrines 



596 American Literary Readings 

which darkened his youth. He could find no flaw in their reasoning, 
but would not accept their conclusions." According to this inter- 
pretation, "The Deacon's Masterpiece," written in 1858, just a 
hundred years after the death of Jonathan Edwards, signalizes the 
complete collapse of the extreme Calvinistic doctrines advocated 
with so much force and logic by the great preacher. This inter- 
pretation becomes all the more convincing when we recall that the 
deacon's chaise was, according to the poem, completed in 1755, just 
about the time of the publication of Edwards's masterpiece. The Free- 
dom of the Will. 

EXPLANATORY: 

320: 17. tertian and quartan. A tertian fever appears every 
first and third day, skipping one day; a quartan fever appears every 
first and fourth day, skipping two days. 

320: 31. quasi. As if. 

320 : 43. Thomas Sanchez. A Jesuit priest (died 1610), who 
wrote many tracts, one of which is mentioned in the text. 

321 : 58. Georgius Secundus. George II, King of England from 
1727 to 1760, was the son of George I of Hanover, Germany. 

321 : 60. Lisbon-town. Lisbon, Portugal, was shaken by a 
disastrous earthquake on November i, 1755. 

321 : 62. Braddock's army. The English General Braddock was 
severely defeated at Fort Duquesne in western Pennsylvania by the 
French and Indians, July 9, 1755. 

321 : 68. felloe. A segment of the rim of a wheel. 

321 : 68. thill. One of the shafts. 

321 : 70. thoroughbrace. The strong leather strap between the two 
parts of the C-spring supporting the body of an old-fashioned carriage. 

323 : 138. whippleiree. Singletree. 

323 : 140. encore. The same. 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

(i) How does Holmes introduce "The Deacon's Masterpiece"? 
(2) Is there any hint that the poem is a satire on Jonathan Edwards 
and his Calvinistic doctrines? Why do you suppose Holmes kept 
this in the background? (Remember how and where the piece was 
first published.) (3) Why does the poet break off line 51 so suddenly? 
(4) What three misfortunes or disasters are mentioned in the second 
stanza, and why? (5) Can you pick any flaw in the deacon's reason- 
ing? (6) What is the effect of putting his remarks in dialect? (7) 
How does the poet gradually lead up to his climax date, November i, 
1855? (8) Read the final passage, beginning "The parson was 
working his Sunday's text," and comment on the skill of the conclusion. 
(9) What is the meter of the poem? (10) What is the effect of frequent 
repetition of the same rime sound as shay — way — day — stay — delay 
in the first stanza? 

Brute Neighbors (Thoreau) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Walden, or Life in the Woods, the most significant of all Thoreau's 
productions, was issued in 1854. Thoreau kept elaborate notebooks 
or journals during his residence at Walden from July, 1845, to Sep- 
tember, 1847, and the book was made up largely from extracts from 



The Notes 597 

these journals, though the material was thoroughly revised and fused 
into a more or less connected series of chapters before publication. 
For a fuller account of the purpose of the volume see the biographical 
sketch of Thoreau. Chapter XII, which we have chosen for reprinting, 
is complete in itself, though marked by some evidences of the lack 
of apparent sequence which is characteristic of practically all of 
Thoreau 's writings. The introductory dialogue seems to divide its 
interest between a meditation on the uselessness of the stir and worry 
of life and the preparations for a fishing excursion. The preceding 
chapters have a good deal to do with other fishing excursions, and so 
this introduction may be considered as a sort of transition from what 
has gone before. Thoreau seems here to be consciously imitating the 
style of Izaak Walton's Complete Angler, a book full of delightful 
meditation and philosophizing as well as instructions in the art of 
fishing. The connection between this introduction and the body of 
the chapter is not apparent, but we may assume that while the two 
friends are tramping toward their fishing-ground, Thoreau discourses on 
his experiences with the birds and animals around his hut in the woods. 
In other words, like Izaak Walton, he takes his fishing excursions not 
merely as opportunities for recreation and sustenance, but for medita- 
tion and for summarizing his observations on nature and life. 

EXPLANATORY: 

331 : I. a companion. The poet, William EUery Channing, was 
one of Thoreau's most intimate friends. 

331 : 14. Bose. A common designation for a farm dog. Note 
the satire and humorous treatment. 

332 : 62. Con-fut-see. The more accurate foreign spelling of 
Confucius, the Chinese religious teacher. 

332 : 64. Mem. Memorandum. The hermit, unable to recall 
his original train of thought, makes a memorandum of at least one 
deduction from the experience — namely, "There is never but one 
opportunity of a kind." 

333 : 77- Pilpay & Co. That is, the maker of animal fables like 
those of Aesop or La Fontaine. Pilpay, or Bidpai, is the ancient 
Sanscrit title of a Hindu wise man or collector of apothegms, fables, 
and the like. 

333 ' 83. distinguished naturalist. Probably Professor Louis 
Agassiz of Harvard College, for whom Thoreau collected many 
specimens. 

335" 173- red squirrel . . . particularly familiar. The following 
paragraph from H. S. Salt's Life of Thoreau relates the anecdote re- 
ferred to: "A story is told how a squirrel which he had taken home 
for a few days in order to observe its habits, refused to be set at 
liberty, returning again and again to its new friend with embarrassing 
persistence, climbing up on his knee, sitting on his hand, and at last 
gaining the day by hiding its head in the folds of his waistcoat — an 
appeal which Thoreau was not able to withstand." 

336: 187. Myrmidons. The fierce soldiers of Thessaly, followers 
of Achilles in the Trojan War. 

337:213. return with his shield or upon it. Plutarch relates how 
a Spartan mother gave her son a shield and sent him to battle saying, 
"My son, either this or upon this"; that is, either return with your 
shield and victory, or be borne back as a corpse upon it. 



598 American Literary Readings 

337 : 214. Achilles . . . Patroclus. When Agamemnon, the 
leader of the Greek forces in the siege of Troy, took from Achilles a 
maiden he had won in battle, the great warrior sulked in his tent, 
refusing longer to aid the Greeks in the battle. But at last, angered 
by the report that Hector had slain Patroclus, he came forth and 
avenged the death of his dearest friend by killing Hector and dragging 
his body around the walls of Troy. Read the account in the Iliad. 

337 • 235. Austerlitz or Dresden. Two of Napoleon's great vic- 
tories on Austrian soil;, the battle of Austerlitz was fought December 
2, 1805, and that of Dresden on August 26, 1813. 

337 : 236. two killed. Captain Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer, 
named below, were the only two Americans killed in the battle of 
Concord. Luther Blanchard was a member of Major Buttrick's 
command and was wounded in the fight. See the notes on Emerson's 
"Concord Hymn," p. 553. 

338 : 267. Hotel des Invalides. The French retreat for aged and 
maimed soldiers, founded at Paris in 1670. 

338 : 273. Kirby and Spence. Joint authors of an Introduction 

to Entomology, a book on insects. 

338 : 275. Hiiber. A Swiss naturalist; died 1831. 

338 : 276. Aeneas Sylvius. Pope Pius H; died 1464. 

338 : 280. Eugeniits the Fourth. Pope of Rome; died 1447. 

339 : 284. Olaus Magnus. A Swedish ecclesiastic of the sixteenth 
century. 

339: 290. Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. Passed in 1850. Webster 
was not the author of the bill, but his support of it attracted upon him 
the severe attacks of the abolitionists. See Whittier's poem " Ichabod" 
(p. 294) in this connection. Thoreau, though never very active nor 
conspicuous in pubHc life, was an ardent abolitionist, and once in a 
public address he fearlessly defended John Brown. 

339 • 300. jerbilla. Another form, and apparently found only in 
Thoreau's writings, of gerbillus, a genus of jumping mice. Compare 
the jerboa of the Old World. 

340 : 33 1 . winged . . . as his horse. An allusion to Pegasus, 
the winged horse of Greek mythology. Why are poets supposed to 
ride on Pegasus? (See a classic mythology.) 

340 : 336. Mill-dam. The business section of Concord, near 
which once stood an old mill-dam. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What purpose is served by the introductory dialogue? In 
what style is it written? (2) At what point does the poet come in? 
In what bit of humor does the hermit indulge on the approach of the 
poet? (3) What is the hermit thinking about in his opening medita- 
tion? Does he revert to this again? Why is he unable to re-create 
the exact state of mind and train of thought after the interruption? 
(4) Do you see any connection between this introduction and the body 
of this chapter? (5) How did Thoreau treat the mice in his hut? 
Is this the ordinary method of dealiag with mice? (6) What do you 
learn about the habits of the partridge, or ruffed grouse, in the next 
paragraph? (7) How does the author add a human and humorous 
tone to the battle of the ants? Do you think he was serious in com- 
paring this battle with some of the greatest battles of history? (8) 
Explain the humorous allusions to the Greek heroes in the siege of 



The Notes 599 

Troy. (See the explanatory notes above.) (9) Would your feelings 
and interests be similar to Thoreau's in observing such a battle? 
(10) Give an account of some similar conflict between insects or 
animals that you may have observed. (This may be made into a 
composition.) (11) In the concluding paragraph of this section is 
there a touch of satire in the reference to the political situation of 
the times? Explain. (12) What humorous effects are aimed at in 
the paragraph on domestic animals in the woods, such as the farm 
dog and the winged cat? (13) Describe fully the hermit's experience 
in chasing the loon. Do you not think this sort of hunting is much 
better than shooting the \yild things? (14) Write a brief composition 
on the literary excellences of Thoreau's style as illustrated in this 
section on chasing the loon. Ask yourself the following questions in 
preparing this composition: Is the passage unified, effective in se- 
quence, climactic? Is the treatment sympathetic, poetic, well sustained 
in dominant tone? Is the diction precise and suggestive? Is the 
material interesting and clearly and logically presented? What is the 
effect of the constant recurrence to the wild, weird laughter of the 
loon? Can you imagine that you have yourself seen and heaid this 
strange bird? Note that the first paragraph on the loon ends with the 
sentence, " He commonly went off in the rain " ; how is this worked out at 
the end of the next long paragraph? Is it a pretty fancy to say that 
the god of loons had sent the rain as an answer to the bird's p'-ayer? 

The Vision of Sir Launfal (Lowell) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

In February, 1848, Lowell said in a letter to his friend Mr. Briggs 
that he had composed "a sort of story . . . more likely to be popular 
than what I write generally. Maria [his wife] thinks well of it. I 
shall probably publish it myself next summer." It was not until 
December that "The Vision of Sir Launfal" appeared in a thin volume 
by itself. The poem was written rapidly, being completed within 
two days, so declared Mr. Underwood, during which time the poet 
worked at a white heat, scarcely taking time to eat or sleep. But 
it is the result of a lifelong tendency toward mysticism or the realization 
of God in the poet's nature, as is indicated in several early minor poems 
on similar themes, such as "The Search" and "The Parable," both of 
which introduce the idea that Christ is found only in service to the 
outcast, the poor, and the weak. 

Lowell's final note in the first edition gives the best introductory 
explanation of the meaning of the poem. "According to the mythology 
of the Romancers, the San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of 
which Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It was 
brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and remained there, 
an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the keeping 
of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon those who had 
charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the 
keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail disappeared. 
From that time it was a favorite enterprise of the Knights of Arthur's 
court to go in search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding 
it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance of King 
Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the subject of one of his 
most exquisite poems. 



6oo American Literary Readings 

"The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) of the 
following poem is my own, and, to serve its purpose, I have enlarged 
the circle of competition in search of the miraculous cup in such a 
manner as to include, not only other persons than the heroes of the 
Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to the supposed 
date of King Arthur's reign." 

The poem contains several verbal infelicities and is faulty in, struc- 
ture as a whole, but as Mr. Ferris Greenslet says, "for all that, it has 
stood the searching test of time; it is beloved now by thousands of 
young American readers, for whom it has been the first initiation 
into the beauty of poetical idealism." 

EXPLANATORY: 

349. Sir Launfal. Lowell borrowed the name but nothing more 
from an old metrical romance called Sir Launfal by Sir Thomas 
Chestre. Another more familiar form of the name is Sir Launcelot. 

349 : 3. list. Pleased, wished. 

349 : 9-10. Not only around our infancy, etc. Alluding to Words- 
worth's "Ode on Immortality," lines 66 ff., "Heaven lies about us in 
our infancy," etc. Note how Lowell takes an enlarged view, 
especially in lines 13 and 19. 

349 : 12. Sinais. Sinai was the mountain between tha Red Sea 
and Canaan, where Moses saw and talked with God, and received 
the tablets of stone with the ten commandments on them. See Exodus 
19 and 20. 

349 : 17. druid wood. The oak groves in which the old Celtic 
priests performed their religious rites. Compare "Druids of eld," 
Evangeline, line 3. 

349: 18. benedicite. Blessing; from the Latin canticle beginning 
"Benedicite omnia opera Domini," "O all ye works of the Lord, bless 
ye the Lord" (Psalms 145:10). 

349 : 2 1 . Earth gets its price, etc. Earth is used in the sense of 
"the world," or evil. Note the contrast with heaven in line 29. 
Another echo of Wordsworth's "Ode on Immortality," line 77, "Earth 
fills her lap with pleasures of her own." 

349 : 27. cap and bells. The medieval court fool, or jester, wore a 
cap with several spangles to which bells were attached; hence "cap 
and bells" has come to be the symbol of folly. How do we pay our 
lives for a cap and bells? 

350 : 29-30. 'Tis heaven alone that is given away, etc. Compare 
Isaiah 55:1, "Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come to the waters, and 
he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat." Note the contrast 
in line 21. 

350 : 33. And what is so rare as a day in June? This is perhaps 
the most frequently quoted passage in all Lowell's poetry. June 
has been called Lowell's month. It is significant that he was the, 
first of the New England poets to break away from the conventional 
laudation of May after the manner of the British poets, and substitute 
the more suitable month of June as the "high-tide of the year" in the 
New England climate. For Lowell's other notable poems on June, 
see "Under the Willows," "Al Fresco," "Sunthin' in the Pastoral 
Line" in the Biglow Papers, etc. 

350: 47. mean. Small, insignificant. Similarly in line 344, " The 
meanest serf in Sir Launfal's land." Compare also Wordsworth's 



The Notes 601 

"Ode on Immortality," lines 202-203, "To me the meanest flower 
that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

350 : 56. nice. Exact, finely discriminating. 

351: 81. Everything is happynow. Compare Wordsworth's " Ode 
on Immortality," line 29, "And all the earth is gay," etc. 

352 : 99. Holy Grail. See Lowell's explanation, introductory note. 

352 : 103. rushes. The medieval floor covering before the days 
of carpets. 

352 : 116. North Countree. An indefinite region to the north of 
central England, the land of the medieval ballads. 

354 : 166. a slender mite. Alluding to the widow's two mites 
(Luke 21 :2). 

354 : 168. all-sustaining Beauty, etc. The spirit of God which 
runs through all things. Compare Emerson's idea of the Earth-soul 
and the Over- soul. 

354: 172. a god . . . store. That is, a godlike power makes it 
an abundant store to feed the soul. 

354' 175- summers. Why five thousand summers? 

354 : 181. The little brook. Lowell said he drew this picture from 
the brook at Watertown near Cambridge. "As I stood on the hill 
just before you enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me was 
delicious, broken only by the tinkle of the little brook, which runs too 
swiftly for Frost to catch it." 

354 : 184. groined. Fitted or matched at the angles of the curved 
or arched roof. 

354 : 190. forest-crypt. A crypt is a recess, as in the basement of 
a cathedral where the pillars rest. Note how many architectural terms 
are used, and explain the meaning of each as clearly as you can. 

355 • 196- arabesques. Fantastic ornaments of leaves, etc., used 
in the Arabian or Mohammedan style of architecture. 

355 : 212. cheeks of Christmas. Visualize the picture in this 
personification. 

355" 213. corbel. A carved projection or bracket of wood or stone. 
Why does the poet say every corbel and rafter is sprouting? 

355 : 216. Yule-log. Yule is borrowed from the Scandinavian 
festival of Juul, held in honor of the god Thor. It was held about the 
same time as, and is now identified with, our Christmas festival. 

356: 231. still. Is this an adjective or an adverb? 

356 : 233. seneschal. The officer of a medieval castle who had 
charge of the festivals. 

356 : 244. A single crow. Note the effectiveness of this image. 
Crows rarely go alone. Compare "The crows flapped over by twos 
and threes" (line 109). 

356 : 254. recked of. Minded, cared for. 

356 : 255. surcoat. The loose garment worn over the armor. 

357 • 259. idle. Ineffective, useless. See also line 330. 

357 : 281. Him who died on the tree. This whole passage is based 
on Christ's crucifixion as described in the Gospels. 

358: 294. ashes and dust. Compare Job 42:6, "Wherefore I 
abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." 

358: 307. Beautiful Gate. "The gate of the temple which is 
called Beautiful," Acts 3:2. Line 308 echoes John 10:7, "I am the 
door," and line 309 alludes to I Corinthians 3: 16, "Ye are the temple 
of God," etc. 



6o2 American Literary Readings 

358: 315. "Lo,it is I, he not afraid." An exact quotation of 
John 6:20. 

359 : 320. my body broken for thee. See accounts of the Last 
Supper, Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20. 

359 : 328. swound. Why is this archaic form of swoon used? 

359 • 336- hangbird. The oriole, so called from its swinging nest. 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LIT ERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

General, (i) Why is this poem called "The Vision of Sir Launfal"? 
Just where does the vision begin and end? (This is the most important 
point in the analysis of the structure of the poem. Mr. Greenslet thinks 
nine out of ten readers of the poem have missed the real point of its 
structure.) (2) The Prelude to Part First opens with the introductory 
figure of the musing organist (lines 1-8), and then in a general way 
states the theme of the poem, — namely, the key to the truly happy or 
Christlike life is the seizing of daily opportunities for service (implied 
specifically in lines 11-12), — showing that all through our lives come 
these opportunities for service as well as temptations to spend our days 
foolishly (lines 9-32). The theme is then elaborated by a full descrip- 
tion of June, typifying happiness in human life (lines 33-93) and 
suggesting the keeping of Sir Launfal 's vow (lines 94-95). Part First 
opens with Sir Launfal's decision to go on his quest for the Holy Grail, 
typifying again the virtuous and happy life by a specific e?:ample in 
Sir Launfal himself (lines 96-105), concluding with his sleep and the 
announcement of the vision (lines 106-108). In line 109 we have the 
beginning of the vision in which Sir Launfal sees his own imaginary 
adventures. There is an introductory description of summer and its 
siege of the castle and then the young knight rides forth on his quest. 
There is just the one simple incident in Part First of how Sir Launfal 
in his pride and youth tossed a golden coin to the leper by his gate, 
only to have it rejected because it came not from the heart (lines 109- 
173). All goes well until we come to the Prelude to Part Second, in 
which the poet practically takes the readers out of the dream, or vision 
(though he does not say so), to show them a picture of winter as a 
contrast to the picture of June in the first Prelude. The contrast is 
most successful, but the unity and sequence of the composition as a 
whole are seriously disrupted. The last part of the second Prelude, 
beginning at line 211, is distinctly a part of the vision, in which Sir 
Launfal sees his castle at Christmas, warm and brilliantly lighted, but 
himself an outcast cold and shelterless. Part Second begins with a 
recurrence to the winter scene just described, and goes on to relate the 
simple incident of how Sir Launfal came back as an old man and an 
outcast from his own hard gate, and found the Holy Grail in his whole- 
souled service to the leper who was still conveniently sitting by the 
castle gate. In this section there are two subordinate visions within 
the main vision- — -namely, lines 261-272 and 302-327. The conclusion 
(lines 334-347) follows Sir Launfal's awakening and transformation 
(lines 328-333). Work all this out in an outline of about one full page. 
(3) Give orally some of the striking contrasts brought out in the two 
Preludes and in the two Parts. (You may be asked later to write a 
composition on the contrasts of the poem.) (4) Explain the nature 
and fitness of the medieval legend which Lowell used as the vehicle for 
his moral conceptions. How has he enlarged the bounds of this 
legend? (5) What kind of emotion seems to have animated the poet 



The Notes 603 

in this composition? (6) In which does the poet seem to be most 
interested, the nature pictures, the story, or the underlying moral 
teachings? (7) State in your own language at least two large moral 
lessons developed in the poem. (8) How would you classify the poem? 
(There is a large narrative element in "The Vision," but the poem 
is cast in the form of the English or irregular ode. Note the irregular 
stanzas, the varied meters and rime schemes, the exalted subject-matter 
and dignified manner of treatment, and the steady progression toward 
a climax. All these are characteristics of the ode.) (9) The meter 
of the first eight lines is iambic pentameter, as in 

Begin ! ning doubt ! fully I and far | away (2) ; 

but the body of the poem is in a sort of combination of iambic and 
anapestic tetrameter. Some lines are entirely iambic, as 

Its arms | outstretched | the dru | id wood (17) ; 

and some are almost wholly anapestic, as 

Now the heart I is so full | that a drop | over fills it (61) ; 

and anapestic feet are so commonly used throughout that we may 
say that the rhythm is characteristically anapestic. There are some 
shorter lines, as 

And rat | ties and wrings 
The ic I y strings (227-228) 
each of two feet, and 

And gloomed | by itself | apart (144) 

of three feet. The rimes range from the usual couplet to alternate and 
inclosed rimes, and in some cases the rime sound is repeated three times. 
Scan lines 225-239. Note that the last -less in line 232 is accented for 
the sake of the rime, while the other two examples of the same syllable 
are unaccented. (10) Suggested memory passages: Lines 9-12; 21- 
32; 33-56; 174-210; 324-327. (11) Suggested subjects for com- 
positions: Contrasts in "The Vision of Sir Launfal"; The Imagery of 
the Poem; Lessons from "Sir Launfal"; Medieval Life as Suggested 
in the Poem; Lowell's Use of Bible Thought and Phraseology in This 
Poem; Some Faults of Language and Structure in "The Vision of Sir 
Launfal"; Lowell's and Whittier's Nature Pictures Compared; a Com- 
parison of "The Vision of Sir Launfal" with Thomas Chatterton's "A 
Ballad of Charitie"; Lowell's Ind'ebtedness to Wordsworth in "The 
Vision of Sir Launfal"; A Summer and a Winter Day in Our Town. 
Specific, (i) Does the musical figure of the introductory lines 
fit the mystical nature of the theme and Lowell's own practice in the 
construction of the poem? (2) Visualize and comment on the beautiful 
imagery in lines 7 and 8. (3) Work out the contrast between Lowell's 
ideas in lines 9-20 and 21-32 and Wordsworth's in the fifth and sixth 
strophes of the "Ode on Immortality." (4) Just why do we not know 
when "We Sinais climb"? (See line 11 for a hint.) (5) Give some 
examples from your own observation and experience of the thought 
"Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us." (6) What is the 
figure in lines 35-36? What instrument did the poet have in mind? 



6o4 American Literary Readings 

(7) Explain the force of the itahcized words in the following expressions: 
"the cowslip startles" (line 45); "the buttercup catches the sun in its 
chalice" (line 46); "a blade too mean" (line 47); " atilt like a blossom" 
(line 50); "the heart in her dumb hreast flutters and sings" (line 54); 
"In the nice ear of Nature" (line 56); "how clear bold chanticleer" 
(line 77). (Is the accidental rime in this last phrase a blemish? Why?) 

(8) Do you catch the poet's enthusiasm for the beautiful June day? 
Why is June called Lowell's month? (See note on line 33.) (9) 
What is the effect of all this beauty on men? (See lines 80 ff.) (10) 
Why is it inappropriate to speak of "unscarred heaven" (line 87)? 

(11) Explain the simile in lines 91-93. Is the figure imaginative? 

(12) How is the Prelude distinctly linked to Part First? (13) Why is 
Sir Launfal made to say that he may have a vision (line 104)? Did the 
people of medieval times believe in visions? (14) Is the picture in 
lines 109-127 intended as a direct continuation of the June scene in 
the first Prelude, or is it a later summer picture seen in Sir Launfal's 
dream? (15) Work out carefully the military figure beginning in 
line 115 and continuing to line 127, and reverted to again below in 
line 134. What were "her pavilions tall" and "every green tent"? 
(16) How do the words suggest the idea in "The drawbridge dropped 
with a surly clang"? Note other examples of similar effect, as in 
line 156. (17) Why is Sir Launfal called a "maiden Knight" (line 
130)? (18) How is the castle used as a foil to the knight? (19) 
Explain "made morn" in line 147. (20) What unpoetical expression 
is found in line 148? Does the exigency of rime justify a poet in using 
a prosaic expression? (21) Is it natural for a leper or a beggar to 
refuse a piece of gold? What mysterious spirit seems to be incarnated 
in this leper? (22) What sort of language and philosophy does the 
leper use? (23) It is said that Lowell has put a medieval European 
legend in the setting of a New England landscape. Is this true? 
Would the description of the New England summer and winter be quite 
applicable to the vague "North Countree"? Remember that the 
artist is merely required to create the correct general impression 
(24) What do you think of the poetical quality of the description of 
the frozen brook (lines 18 1-2 10)? vSelect five of the most striking or 
picturesque phrases. (25) Compare Lowell's picture of the fire 
(lines 215-224) with Whittier's in "Snow-Bound, " lines 120-132 and 
155-174. Which is the more accurate? Which is the more imagina- 
tive? (26) Contrast the two pictures of Sir Launfal, lines 129-139 and 
225-232. (27) Comment on the simile in line 233. Is it imaginative? 

(28) Why is the castle made so warm and comfortable in lines 21 1-239? 

(29) "Again it was morning" (line 246); find the exact line that this 
is intended to parallel, and contrast the two passages introduced by 
these lines. (30) Why does the poet bring the knight to the exact 
spot where the leper first stood? (31) What is the purpose of Sir 
Launfal's musing, or the vision within "The Vision" (lines 261-272)? 
Does this give you some idea of how the knight had spent the interven- 
ing years? (32) What breaks in on this vision? Is the contrast 
effective? (33) By what means is the repulsiveness of the leper 
expressed in lines 275-279? Select the special words that strengthen 
the impression of loathsomeness. Why is the leper made more repul- 
sive here than in lines 148-157? (34) How has Sir Launfal's attitude 
toward the leper changed as indicated in his speech, lines 280-287? 
(35) Does line 294 mean that "the heart within him was ashes and 



The Mote$ 60s 

dust" now or when he was a young knight? (36) Into what person- 
aUty is the leper transfigured now that Sir Launfal shows Christian 
charity and service to him (Unes 303 flF.)? Note whose words the poet 
puts into the leper's mouth (lines 315 ff.)- (37) What is the meaning 
of brine (line 311)? Why is "shaggy unrest" (line 313) an effective 
image? (38) Why did Sir Launfal not go on his quest for the Holy 
Grail when awake? (39) How do you picture Sir Launfal after you 
have read through the poem? Does the poet make it perfectly clear 
to you that Sir Launfal had never grown old? (40) What previous 
figure does line 338 recall? Is it artistic thus to revert to the opening 
passage at the close of the piece? Why? (41) Later in his life Lowell 
made a fine address on "Democracy." Is there any hint in his belief 
in this doctrine in the conclusion to "The Vision of Sir Launfal"? 



The Courtin' (Lowell) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

While the Biglow Papers, First Series, was going through the press 
in 1848, the printer reported to Lowell that there was a blank page 
that needed to be filled. Lowell immediately sat down and wrote a 
review of the work, pretending that it was taken from The Jalaam 
Independent Blunderbuss; in this review the supposititious editor 
compliments highly the work of his fellow-townsman, Hosea Biglow, 
and then adds that he would append a fragment of a pastoral from a 
manuscript copy loaned him by a friend, the title of which was "The 
Courtin'. " The printer put in six stanzas, now numbers 2, 4, 5, 6, and 
15 of the enlarged and completed poem, and then cut it off short 
because the page was full. The piece was interrupted just at that 
interesting stage where "His heart went pity-pat. But hern went pity 
Zekle." Naturally there were scores of requests from readers of the 
book for the remainder of the story. But Lowell had kept no copy and 
the printer had destroyed the original. So he patched up a conclusion, 
and in 1864 he enlarged the poem to its present form, saying, "I added 
other verses, into some of which I infused a little more sentiment in 
a homely way, and after a fashion completed it by sketching in the 
characters and making a connected story." The Biglow Papers as 
a whole has been called Lowell's most original and permanent con- 
tribution to American literature, and Mr. Greenslet, the latest biog- 
rapher of Lowell, says that "The Courtin'" is "oerhaps the most 
nearly perfect of his poems." 

EXPLANATORY: 

360: 16. dresser. A sideboard or cupboard. Compare Evangeline, 
line 205. 

360 : 17, crook-necks. Crooked-necked gourds or squashes. 

360 : 19. queen's-arm. An old-fashioned musket which Grand- 
father Young had brought back "busted" from the battle of Concord. 
See Emerson's "Concord Hymn," p. 138. 

360 : 21. coz. Because. 

360 : 25. kingdom-come. A homely dialect phrase meaning "like 
heaven." 

360 : 27. dogrose. The wild or brier rose. 

361 : 34. squired 'em. Attended or waited upon them. 
361 : 36. All is. The fact, or whole truth, is. 



6o6 American Literary Readings 

361 : 43. Ole Hunderd. The tune usually sung to the long-meter 
doxology. 

361 : 58. sekle. Sequel or outcome. 

362 : 88. Snowhid. Hidden under the snow. 

363 : 95- '^^•^ cried. The formal engagement, or "bans," of a 
couple was formerly announced or "cried" at church. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Point out some of the best humorous passages in this poem. 
(2) What effect has the homely New England dialect? Would the 
poem have been as good written in correct or literary English? (3) 
What evidences of real poetic truth and sentiment lie vmderneath the 
homely_ dialect? (4) Are the characters drawn true to life? (5) 
Memorize the selection and recite it for the class. (This may be 
assigned_ to one or two members of the class. If desirable, stanzas 
8 to 13 inclusive may be omitted from the recitation.) 

A Fable for Critics (Lowell) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This jeM d' esprit was thrown off at intervals during 1847 and 1848, 
largely for Lowell's own amusement. He was advised by some of 
those to whom he read parts of it to publish it, and he finally gave his 
rights in the piece to his friend C. F. Briggs, and it appeared anony- 
mously toward the close of 1848. It is a mock-heroic or satiric poem 
of a humorous character, though Lowell himself said that the criticism 
in it was meant to be serious. It is by no means a great poem, but it 
is by far the cleverest and most original production of its kind in Amer- 
ican literature, rivaling Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" 
in English literature, though written in a mood by no means so venge- 
ful and caustic. The criticism is remarkably acute, and according to 
the verdict of time it has proved to be almost entirely correct. The 
poem has in it nearly two thousand lines, but since it suffers little by 
being excerpted, we have included here only such portions as are of 
interest to young readers in their study of our more prominent writers. 

EXPLANATORY: 

364 : 24. Olympus . . . Exchange. A hit at the combination of 
the philosopher and shrewd business sense in Emerson. 

364 : 27. Plotinus-Montaigne. Plotinus was a Greek philosopher 
born in Egypt in the third century; Montaigne was a French essayist, 
born in Gascony in 1533. Emerson was a close student of both these 
writers. 

364 : 46. lecturer. This means that the earth, not Emerson, 
though like him, was ninetj'-nine parts lecturer. 

364: 50. postmortem. After death; this means that Emerson merely 
serves t^p his material in a lifeless sort of style. Is the criticism just? 

364 : 55. Griswold. Rufus W. Griswold was a conspicuous critic 
and editor of the time. 

365 : 73. Berkshire's hills. In western Massachusetts where 
Bryant was born and reared. 

365 : 74. in loco, etc. "At a given place (add 'by a given fireside' 
here) you may play the fool." In a previous passage in loco desipere 
was used; this explains the parenthetical "add/oro here." 



The Notes 607 

365 : 79. Mr. Quivis. Mr. Who-ever-you-please. 

366 : 96. Hesiod's staff. In Thomas Cooke's translation of the 
Greek poet Hesiod's Words and Days, we read, 

"Fools, blind to truth! Nor knows their erring soul 
How much the half is better than the whole." 

366 : 108. my Pytho7iess. According to the plan of the whole poem 
it is Apollo speaking, and he refers to the Pythoness, or Pythia, the 
priestess who delivered the message from Apollo at his Oracle in Delphi. 

366 : 121. old what's-his-name. Referring to Taillefer, a Norman 
bard and soldier who marched before William's army at the battle of 
Hastings, 1066, singing the song of Roland and tossing his sword in 
the air. 

367 : 126. Thor. The Scandinavian god of war, etc., usually 
represented with a hammer. 

367 : 127. Anne haec, etc. "Is this the coat of thy son?" George 
Fox, the founder of the Quakers, died in 1691. He made for himself 
a suit of leather. See Carlyle's interesting chapter on him in Sartor 
Resartus. 

367 : 131. Goliath. See in I Samuel 17 the story of David and 
Goliath. 

367 : 132. Castaly's spring. A spring on Mount Parnassus in 
Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. 

367 : 135. The Voice. Whittier attached himself to the cause of 
abolition long before it became popular. There is a playful double 
meaning here, "The Voice" referring to the Quaker inward voice, or 
conscience, and the Voices of Freedom, Whittier's first volume of poems. 

367 : 148. rathe. Early. 

367: 151. a John Bunyan Fouque, a Puritan Tieck. Referring 
to the combination of moralist and romancer in Hawthorne. The 
English Baptist preacher John Bunyan is the author of The Pilgrim's 
Progress; De la Motte Fouque was a German poet and romance writer; 
Tieck was a German dramatist, poet, and writer of gloomy romances. 

368 : 159. good as a lord. That is, he had earned the right to a 
lordship as well as had Scott. 

368: 163. American Scott. Cooper is still called the American 
Scott, but Lowell is right in implying that it is much to the American 
author's disadvantage. 

368 : 167. acquitting. That is, acquitting Cooper of being the 
American Scott. 

368 : 173. Natty Bumpo. Nathaniel Bumpo, or Bumppo, other- 
wise known as Hawk-eye, Deerslayer, Leatherstocking, the famous 
scout and woodsman in The Pioneers and the four other Leather- 
stocking romances by Cooper. 

368 : 176. Coffin. Long Tom Coffin, the famous old sailor in 
The Pilot. 

369 : 197. Adams . . . Primrose. Parson Abraham Adams, the 
simple, innocent, and yet courageous preacher in Henry Fielding's 
novel, Joseph Andrews; Dr. Charles Primrose, the title character in 
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. 

369 : 198. Barnahy Rudge. The title character in one of Charles 
Dickens's novels. He was a 'shrewd, half-witted youth with a love for 
the wild life of London. He possessed a pet raven, and it was doubtless 
this fact that caused Lowell to associate Poe, the author of "The 
Raven," with him. 



6o8 American Literary Readings 

369 : 204. Mathews. Cornelius Mathews, a lawyer and volu- 
minous contributor to the magazines about the middle of the 
nineteenth century. 

369: 217. Collins and Gray. William Collins and Thomas Gray, 
two eighteenth-century English poets. 

369 : 223. Melesigenes. One of the names applied to Homer; he 
was so called because said by some to be the son of the river-god 
Meles, near Smyrna, Asia Minor. 

369 : 225. I've heard the old blind man, etc. Remember that it is 
Apollo speaking; hence he may claim to have heard Homer recite his 
own poems. 

370 : 228. Strauss. An Austrian composer of light waltz music. 
370 : 229. Beethoven. Ludwig von Beethoven is the greatest of 

the German musical composers. 

370 : 231. Theocritus. A Greek pastoral poet of the third century 
before Christ. 

370 : 241. Cervantes. Spanish poet and novelist, author of Don 
Quixote. 

370 : 244. having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes. It 
happens that the lines containing the laugh at the American Raphaels 
and Dantes occur some ninety-odd lines further down in the poem. 
Lowell doubtless rearranged the sequences later and forgot to correct 
this line. 

370: 247. Dick Steele. Richard Steele, who, with Joseph Addison, 
wrote many of the Spectator papers, including those on Sir Roger de 
Coverlev. 

370 : 251. fine old English Gentleman. Referring to Irving's por- 
trait of the master of Bracebridge Hall in the Sketch Book. 

371 : 262. new Telegraph. The first telegraph line was set up 
between Washington City and Baltimore in 1844. 

371 : 263. pricks down. In the early Morse method of telegraph- 
ing, the messages were pricked in dots and dashes on paper. 

371 : 269. Campbell. The English poet Thomas Campbell, author 
of "Ye Mariners of England" and other famous sea pieces. "The 
Tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise" probably refers to his 
famous little poem "Old Ironsides." 

371 : 273. Bulwe/s Nezv Timon. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, 
author of many novels and several plays, published a satiric poem, 
"The New Timon," in 1846. 

371 : 290. last New Jerusalem. That is, the latest moral or 
political reform. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Read the criticism of each of these authors in connection with 
your study of their works. (2) Which of the satiric sketches do you 
think is the best? (3) Do you agree with all of the criticism? Give 
some examples of what you think is unjust criticism. (4) The meter 
is anapestic tetrameter instead of the ordinary iambic pentameter 
used in heroic or satiric verse. This meter helps to give the whimsical 
and humorous tone so characteristic of the poem. For example take 
lines 49-50: 

"With the qui | et preci | sion of sci | ence he'll sort em, 
■^ ^ r w-^/w^ /s^v_/^ 
But you can't (help suspect | ing the whole I a post mortem, ' 



The Notes 609 

The peculiar rimes, many of them feminine and even three-syllabled, 
like cabinet — dab in it, conjecture her — lecturer, also add distinctly to 
this whimsical and playful tone. Point out some of the best (or worst) 
of these rimes. 

Our Literature (Lowell) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

When Lowell was asked to respond to the toast "Our Literature" 
at the commemoration, on April 30, 1889, of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of Washington's inauguration as President, he twice refused; 
but when Oliver Wendell Holmes and President Charles W. Eliot of 
Harvard importuned him to accept the invitation, he consented to 
break the silence to which he thought his advanced years entitled him. 
He was not satisfied with his eflFort, for the audience was so large that 
he could not make himself heard; l3ut this short speech will illustrate 
the more serious style of Lowell's prose, and it is of special interest to 
students of American literature as the final word of our "Representa- 
tive Man of Letters." 

EXPLANATORY: 

223 : 5. the Psalmist's measure. "The days of our years are three 
score years and ten" (Psalms 90: 10). 

224 : 58. where was our literature. For many years English 
critics taunted American writers with the query "Who reads an Ameri- 
can book?" Irving's Sketch Book was the first serious answer to this 
query. 

224 : 63. vates sacer. A sacred prophet, or poet. 

225 : 86. one precious book. St. Augustine's Cotifessions. 

225 : 89. find swans in birds of quite another species. An inverted 
or veiled allusion to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling." 

226 : 114. low on the list of toasts. Lowell came twelfth on the 
program and was followed only by Benjamin Harrison in the final toast 
on "America." 

227 : 130. old wives' tale. An oral tradition or legend. Wife in 
this sense means simply an adult woman of the lower classes. Com- 
pare George Peele's drama, "An Old Wives' Tale." 

227 : 141. ^'Rejoice, O young man," etc. Ecclesiastes 11:9. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What introductory thoughts are expressed in paragraphs I 
and 2? (2) What three reasons are given why literature should be 
recognized on this anniversary? (3) What consolation does Lowell 
find in the foreign query as to where our literature was? (4) What 
reasons does he give as to why we could not suddenly develop a litera- 
ture, and by what standards does he insist that we must judge our 
literature? (5) Why is literature the most powerful form of human 
expresison? (6) What warning does the speaker utter in paragraphs 
7 and 8? (7) What is Lowell's definition of literature? Memorize it. 
(8) Study the precision and clearness of the diction, the smoothness 
and easy rhythm of the well-rounded sentences, the distinct and well- 
articulated paragraph structure, and the general stylistic qualities of 
the whole speech. 



6io American Literary Readings 

Review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This review appeared in Graham's Magazine, May, 1842. In the 
previous month Poe had written a hasty notice of half a page, promising 
to review Hawthorne's stories in detail in the next number. Poe 
again reverted to Hawthorne's tales, quoting in an extended review 
published in Codey's Lady's Book, November, 1847, several of the 
salient paragraphs of this earlier review. The paragraph beginning 
"A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale" has become a sort 
of locus classicus for all short-story criticism. It was Irving and 
Hawthorne who wrote our first artistic short stories, but it was Poe 
who best understood the technique of this form, and the public now 
gives him credit for foreseeing the importance and greatly furthering 
the development of this modern art form. We reprint this character- 
istic book review as a type of a very familiar form of literary criticism, 
and one in which the student may exercise his own talent. 

EXPLANATORY: 

383 : 63. a rhymed poem . . . perused in an hour. Poe continued 
to stress this note in his address "On the Poetic Principle," published 
in Sartain's Union Magazine, October, 1850, saying, "I hold that a 
long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase 'a long poem' 
is a flat contradiction in terms." This address repeats some parts of 
the present review almost verbatim. 

384 : 84. De Beranger. Pierre Jean de Beranger, a French lyric 
poet; died 1857. 

384 : 85. immassive. Lacking in mass; one of Poe's coinages. 

384 : .90. In medio tutissimus ibis. "You will go most safely in 
the middle way." 

385 : 132. idea of the Beautiful. In the address "On the Poetic 
Principle" Poe defined poetry as "the rhythmical creation of Beauty." 

385 : 136. tales of ratiocination. That is, tales based on the 
principle of deductive reasoning. Poe's own tales, "The Gold Bug," 
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," are the 
best examples of this type. 

386: 148. par parent hese. By way of parenthesis. Poe was fond 
of the use of French and Latin phrases. 

386 : 155. Blackwood. A literary magazine published at Edin- 
burgh, Scotland. 

386 : 167. Mr. John Neal. A minor American author; died 1876. 

388 : 212. caviare. A Russian relish which is appreciated only by 
a cultivated taste; hence anything fine that is unappreciated by the 
vulgar crowd. Se'e Shakespeare's use of the word in Hamlet, II: ii. 

389 : 248. resembles a plagiarism. The joke is on Poe, for "Howe's 
Masquerade" first appeared in the Democratic Review, May, 1838; 
Poe's "William Wilson" first appeared in Burton's The Gentleman's 
Magazine, 1839. 

390: 292. a passage . . . of "William Wilson." The parallel 
passage referred to is as follows : " ' Scoundrel ! ' I said, in a voice 
husky with rage, while every syllable I uttered seemed as new fuel to 
my fury; 'scoundrel! imposter! accursed villain! You shall not — you 
shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I stab you where you 
stand!'" Do you think there is much resemblance between the 
passages quoted? 



The Notes 6ii 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) A good book review may contain a survey of the content 
and division and analysis of it, some general estimate of the form in 
which the work is cast, specific criticism of what is good and bad, 
and a smnmary of the author's merits and defects. Has Poe followed 
this plan? Point out the divisions of his review. (2) What para- 
graphs would you select as the most valuable in this essay? Give 
your reasons. (3) In this review Poe lays down more fully than 
elsewhere the principles of short-story writing. Work these out into 
a definite usable plan, giving specific quotations to support your 
points. [Suggestion: (a) The author of a short story must definitely 
plan his story to produce a preconceived effect; (b) this must be a 
unique or single effect, so as to produce perfect unity or totality of 
impression; (c) the story must not be too long nor too short, or else 
it will defeat its own end of creating a pleasurable sensation; (d) it 
must show originality, invention, imagination.] (4) Read a story by 
Hawthorne, preferably one mentioned in this review, and apply these 
principles to its construction, in order to determine how far Hawthorne 
fulfills the requirements laid down by Poe. (5) Suggested composition 
assignment: Write a review of some modern novel or some collection 
of short stories. 

The Cask of Amontillado (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This story was first published in Godey's Lady's Book, November, 
1846. It is one of Poe's latest and most perfect horror stories. In 
a very brief space it presents to us an unforgettable picture of Italian 
family pride with its implacable spirit of revenge. 

EXPLANATORY: 

391: 37. pipe. A large cask; in modern liquid measure, 126 gallons. 

391 : 37. Amontillado. A fine, light-colored Spanish sherry. 

392 : 68. roquelaure. A short cloak; so called from the Due de 
Roquelaure; pronounced rok-lor'. 

392: 70. palazzo. Italian for "palace" ; pronounced pa-la'-tzo. 

393 : 109. Medoc. A kind of French wine. 

394 : 123. foot d'or . . . serpent rampant. A golden foot on a 
blue background, crushing a springing serpent. 

394 : 126. Nemo me impune lacessit. "No one wounds me with 
impunity." 

394: 130. puncheons. Large casks, containing 72 gallons at least. 

394 : 140. De Grave. Presumably a strong Italian wine. 

Look up the following words if you do not already know their 
meaning: impunity, immolation, connoisseur ship, virtuoso, sconces, 
flambeaux, catacombs, rheum, crypt. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What problem does Poe set himself in this story? (2) Does 
he state the problem promptly and move swiftly to the action, or 
does he approach his theme leisurely? (3) Why is so much made of 



6 12 American Literary Readings 

the smile? Of Fortunato's skill in judging wine? (4) What is the 
advantage of choosing the carnival season for the setting? Consider 
particularly the irony of Fortunato's costume. (5) What is the ad- 
vantage of introducing Luchesi's name? How many times is it re- 
peated and at what points in the story? (6) Do Montresor's servants 
act in accord with the general spirit of duplicity and insincerity, of the 
Italian character? (7) When is Fortunato's cap and bells first men- 
tioned? When is it first made to jingle? At what points and with 
what effect is the jingle of the bells repeated? (8) Why does Montresor 
continually suggest that they go back? (9) Why is the drinking of 
the wine introduced? Does Montresor drink as much as Fortunato? 
(10) What irony is there in Montresor's toast? (11) Describe Mont- 
resor's coat-of-arms, and then interpret it in terms of the story; that 
is, tell whom the foot and snake represent, etc. (12) What advantage 
is gained by the constant allusion to the nitre? To the bones of the 
dead buried there? (13) By what device is the mason's trowel first 
introduced? (14) Just how is the victim caught in the niche? (15) 
What tone is exhibited in Montresor's final plea that they return? 
What irony is expressed in the "little attentions" which he promised 
Fortunato? (16) Describe the walling up of the tomb. What effect 
did it have on Fortunato? (17) How does/ Montresor stop his victim 
from screaming? (18) In the final laugh and words of Fortunato is 
he drunk or sober, sane or insane? (Be careful to decide this question 
with relation to the problem as set down in the first paragraph of the 
story.) (19) How do such stories affect you? Do you feel the artistic 
power of this one? (20) Are the characters clearly portrayed? Give 
your concept of them. (21) Note how much of the action is presented 
by conversation. Is this easy to do? Is it artistic? (22) Apply to 
this story Poe's tests of the short story as set forth in his criticism 
of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales. (23) Is there any moral purpose to 
this story? Does this add to or detract from its artistic force? 

The Purloined Letter (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"The Purloined Letter" first appeared in The Gift for 1845. It 
was not the first of Poe's detective stories in which M. Dupin figured, 
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie 
Roget" having preceded it; but it is more pleasant than the others 
to read. In its emotional power it is not to be compared with Poe's 
best horror tales, but it illustrates a distinctive type and is well worth 
studying as an example of what Poe called stories of ratiocina-tion. 

EXPLANATORY: 

398 : Nil sapientice, etc. "There is nothing more hateful to wis- 
dom than too much cleverness." Seneca was a Roman tragic poet 
and prose writer of the first century. 

398 : 4. au troisieme, etc. On the third (that is, the fourth 
according to American counting) floor of 33 Donot Street in Faubourg 
St. Germain (a part of Paris). . 

398 : 12. Rue Morgue . . . Marie Roget. A reference to Poe's 
two other famous detective stories. Read them if possible. 

398: 16. Monsieur G , the Prefect. Chief of police. Note how 

Poe uses initials, dashes, etc., to give an air of truth or actuality. This 
device is rarely used by modem writers of fiction. 



The Notes 613 

402 : 140. minister's hotel. That is, his official residence. 

402: 144. au fait. Informed as to fact. 

407 : 316. Abeniethy. An English surgeon; died 1831. 

407 : 345. escritoire. French for "writing-desk." 

408 : 372. Procrustean bed. Look up this familiar allusion. 

409 : 416. Rochefoucauld, etc. Frangois La Rochefoucaiild, a 
French epigrammatist; died 1680. Jean de La Bruyere, a French 
moralist; died 1696. Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat and 
political writer; died 1527. Tommaso Campanella, an Italian writer; 
died 1639. 

410 : 452. recherches. French for "carefully sought out, well 
hidden." The singular form recherche is used just below. 

411 : 473. non distributio medii. A term in logic indicating the 
fallacy of "the undistributed middle." Because all fools are poets, 
it does not follow that all poets are fools, nor that this particular poet, 
Minister D , is a fool. 

411 : 480. poet and mathematician. Poe was himself both a poet 
and a good mathematician. 

411 : 488. " II y a a parier," etc. "It is a good wager that every 
public idea, every accepted convention, is a piece of stupidity, since 
it is received by the greater number of people." Sebastien Chamfort, 
a French epigrammatist; died 1794. 

412 : 499. 'ambitus,' etc. In Latin am6t7M5 means literally, walk- 
ing around, as in seeking an office; religio, from re-, back, -f- ligare, 
bind; homines honesti, distinguished men. 

412 : 506. The mathematics are. We would now say "mathematics 
is." 

412 : 525. Bryant. Jacob Bryant, English antiquarian, author of 
A New System or An Analysis of Ancient Mythology; died 1804. 

413 : 549. intrigant. Intriguer. 

414 : 584. vis inertice. Force of inertia. 

1 417 : 692. the letter had been turned. To understand the context 
here, the student should be reminded that the letter was a large double 
sheet, and that the address was written on the back and the letter 
then sealed with wax. The gummed envelope had not come in Poe's day.. 
418 : 733. facilis descensus Averni. "Easy is the descent into 
Avernus." Avemus is a volcanic lake near Naples, Italy, once sup- 
posed to be the gate to Hades, or the lower regions. 

418 : 734, Catalani. Angelica Catalani, a noted Italian singer; 
died 1849. 

418: 737. monstruni horrendum. Horrible monster. UsedinVer- 
gU's Aeneid, Book III, line 658. 

419 : 750. MS. Manuscript. The derivative meaning, writing 
by hand, or handwriting, is here intended. 

419 : 752. " Un dessein," etc. " A design so wicked, if not worthy 
of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes." The classical story of Atreus and 
Thyestes relates how two brothers became deadly enemies and strove 
to take vengeance on each other. 

419 : 754. Crebillon's Atree. Prosper Jolj'ot de Crebillon was a 
French poet, author of the tragedy Atree et Thyeste here referred to. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) How does Poe connect this story with the two other detective 
stories in which M. Dupin played the leading r61e? (2) What is the 



6 14 American Literary Readings 

main purpose of the conversation with the Prefect at the opening of 
the story? (3) In what way is the solution of the problem hinted by 
Dupin? (4) Why does Poe make the Prefect laugh so heartily? Is 
this laugh reverted to again in the story? (5) Explain the problem 
as outlined by the Prefect. (6) Enumerate his exploits in search of 
the purloined letter. In this connection explain the Latin motto used 
as a headpiece for the story. (7) Why does the Prefect visit Dupin 
the second time? Is Dupin's anecdote of the English surgeon, Dr. 
Abernethy, apropos? (8) What is the effect on the reader and on the 
characters of Dupin's sudden proposal to produce the letter? (9) Into 
what two distinct parts is the story divided, and just where is the 
point of division? (10) Which is more interesting, the first part or 
the second? Why? (11) W^hy does Dupin begin his explanation of 
how he got the letter with an analysis of the methods of the Parisian 
police? (12) Why is it necessary to analyze Minister D 's char- 
acter so fully ? (13) Why did Poe make so much of the relation between 
mathematics and poetr\'? (14) Does all this learned talk give you an 
exalted opinion of Dupin's intellectual acuteness? Enumerate some 
of the points he makes about the adaptation of mathematical axioms 
to other realms of thought, the law of inertia, the psychology of adver- 
tising and of solving guessing games, etc. (15) Relate just how Dupin 
discovered and obtained the letter. (16) What astute trick did Dupin 
play on Minister D — ■ — • by the inscription he put inside the facsimile 
letter, and why did he do it? (17) Compare this story with "The 
Cask of Amontillado." Which is the more interesting? Which the 
more artistic? Which appeals more to the emotions, and which more 
to the intellect? (18) Apply to this story Poe's own test of what a 
short story should be, p. 385. (19) Suggested subjects for composi- 
tions: A Comparison of A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes with 
Poe's C. Auguste Dupin; Poe's Short Stories by Types; Poe's Influence 
on Modern Short-Story Writers; Why I Like Poe's Tales. 

To Science (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

Poe wrote few sonnets, preferring usually to make up his own 
verse forms rather than confine himself to established artificial forms 
like the sonnet. "To Science," however, has been. singled out as one 
of the very finest of the irregular or Shakespearean sonnets produced 
in America. It first appeared without title as a sort of prelude to the 
volume Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems (1829). It was after- 
wards printed separately in slightly revised forms in all later editions 
of Poe's poems, and was republished in the Southern Literary Messenger, 
May, 1836, under the title "Sonnet." The preferred text is that of the 
1845 edition of Poe's The Raven and Other Poems. 

EXPLANATORY: 

419 : 3-4. Why preyest thou . . . vulture. An allusion to the 
punishment of Prometheus. Tell the story. 

419 : 9. Diana. The Roman goddess of the moon, chastity, and 
the chase. She is usually represented as seated in a bright car with 
a silver crescent in her hair and a quiver with bow and arrows at 
her back. 

419 : 10. Hamadryad. A wood nymph, the spirit of a tree. 



TJie Notes 615 

419 : 12. Naiad. A water nymph, the spirit of a spring or stream. 
In what sense is flood used? 

419 : 13. Elfin. A poetical form of elf, a kind of fairy. 

419 : 14. tamarind. A tree of India and other tropical countries, 
bearing a pleasing bean-like fruit. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(l) Is there a single well-unified thought in this sonnet? State 
it in your own words. Where is it first set forth in the sonnet? (2) 
How is science personified in the first two lines? In the third and fourth 
lines what picture is suggested? (3) How is the theme developed 
in the second quatrain? (4) What effects of science are given in the 
third quatrain? (5) How is the thought of the poem clinched in the 
final couplet? Notice how the last line returns to the opening thought, 
thus rounding out the sonnet. (6) In the earliest form of the poem 
"shrubbery" was used where "tamarind tree" now occurs. Explain 
why the change is a distinct improvement. (7) This sonnet is written 
on the irregular or Shakespearean model. Consult the paragraph 
on the sonnet, in the section on English metrics, and work out care- 
fully the rime scheme of Poe's sonnet. (8) Compare this sonnet with 
the regular or Italian model used in Longfellow's "Divina Commedia," 
p. 265, and the partial Italian model used in Hayne's "Composed in 
Autumn," p. 437. 

To Helen (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This is thought to be one of Poe's earliest poems. It was first 
printed in what is known as the "second edition" of his poems, in 
1 83 1, but it is supposed to have been written much earlier, according 
to some even in Poe's fourteenth year. Mrs. Jane Craig Stanard, 
of Richmond, the mother of one of Poe's schoolmates, was doubtless 
the inspiration of the poem. She was a beautiful, gentle, gracious 
woman, and when on one occasion she spoke tenderly to Poe there 
sprang up in his soul what he called his first purely ideal love. Poe 
made several later revisions in the text, and in its final form the poem 
has been singled out as one of the finest pure lyrics in the language. 

EXPLANATORY: 

419 : 2. Nicean barks. Nicean may refer to the ancient Greek 
city and empire in Asia Minor. Professor W. P. Trent suggests that 
this obscure allusion may be intended for the Pheeacian barks by 
which the wandering Ulysses was carried to his native shores. 

420 : 7. hyacinth. Dark. See Poe's use of the word hyacinthine 
in the second paragraph of "Ligeia" to describe the Lady Ligeia's 
raven-black hair. 

420: 8. Naiad. The Naiads vrere represented in Greek mythology 
as lovely nymphs, the guardian spirits of fountains, rivers, etc. 

420 : 9. "To the glory,'' etc. These two lines show Poe's wonderful 
power of poetical condensation. They are perhaps the most fre- 
quently quoted lines in all his poetry. 

420 : 14. Psyche. The Greeks personified the human soul by the 
figure of a beautiful maiden named Psyche, beloved of Cupid, the god 
of love. 



6i6 American Literary Readings 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Give the thought of the poem by stanzas. (2) What is the 
primary emotion expressed? (3) Why is this poem classed as one 
of the finest of Poe's pure lyrics? (4) Does it carry out Poe's dictum 
that poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty? (5) The rhythm 
is iambic and the meter four-stressed for most of the lines, but there 
are many artistic variations, especially in the last lines of the stanzas. 
Note also that the rime scheme constantly varies. What is the 
general effect of all these irregularities? (6) Read the poem aloud a 
number of times, visualizing the images and re-creating the emotion 
as vividly as possible. It would be well to memorize the stanzas as 
a sort of measuring-rod for pure lyrical expression. 

Israfel (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem also appeared in the 1831 edition of Poe's poems. 
According to the poet's habit, the piece was revised and republished 
from time to time during his life. Edmund Clarence Stedman says 
of this poem: "Of all these lyrics is not this the most lyrical, — not 
only charged with music, but with light? For once, and in his freest 
hour of youth, Poe got above the sepulchres and mists, even beyond 
the pale-faced moon, and visited the empyrean. There is joy in this 
carol, and the radiance of the skies, and ecstatic possession of the 
gift of song . . . If I had any claim to make up a 'Parnassus,' not 
perhaps of the most famous English lyrics, but of those which appeal 
strongly to my own poetic sense, and could select but one of Poe's, 
I confess that I should choose 'Israfel' for pure music, for exaltation, 
and for its original, satisfying quality of rhythmic art." 

EXPLANATORY: 

420. Israfel. In the Koran, the Mohammedan holy book, Israfel 
is called the angel of music. The quotation used by Poe as a motto 
was taken from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh; Moore got it from Sale's 
Preliminary Discourse on the Koran, rather than from the Koran itself. 
Poe, who frequently tampered with his quotations, has added the words 
"whose heart-strings are a lute" from his own poem. 

420 : 5. giddy stars. Trembling, wavering. Giddy is derived from 
the Anglo-Saxon giddian, to sing, to be merry; Poe may be using 
the word here with some implication of this original meaning. 

420 : 12. levin. The Middle English word for lightning. 

420 : 13. Pleiads. The so-called seven stars in the constellation 
Taurus. Only six of the stars are ordinarily visible to the naked eye; 
hence the legend of the lost Pleiad, which Poe reverts to here by saying 
"which were seven." The poet calls them rapid, doubtless because 
of their apparently quick ascent of the meridian. 

421 : 26. Houri. A houri was one of the beautiful and immortal 
maidens, who, according to Mohammedan belief, attend the spirits 
of the dead in paradise. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Why are the stars said to become mute when Israfel sings? 
(2) What is the force of the epithet enamored, line 10? (3) What is 
the real cause of Israfel's wonderful power? Does Poe use his own 



The Notes 617 

heartstrings as a lute, that is, does he put his own emotions into his 
lyrics? (4) What images of heaven does Poe present in this song? 

(5) What is the thought of the last stanza? Does it seem egotistic? 

(6) Compare the poem with Shelley's "Skylark," particularly the 
last stanzas of each poem. (7) Note again the irregularity of the 
metrical and stanzaic forms. Poe seems to follow the impulses of 
his own genius rather than the established forms of lyrical verse. 



Ulalume (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"Ulalume," one of Poe's latest and most original poems, was 
first published in the American Whig Review, December, 1847. 
Virginia Clemm Poe, his child wife, died in this year, and it is well 
known that Poe was never quite himself after this staggering blow. 
He had several romantic friendships after Virginia's death, the most 
prominent being that with Mrs. Sarah H. Whitman, whom, according 
to her own story, he frantically besought to marry him. The most 
probable interpretation of "Ulalume" is that it represents the poet's 
temporary fancy of allowing another love to take the place of his 
devotion to Virginia. Some have held that the poem is not to be 
interpreted personally, but impersonally as the poet's devotion to 
that ideal beauty which he loved and had lost, but which he never 
ceased to yearn for. At best it is exceedingly mystical and intangible 
in its intellectual or thought content, but its lyrical appeal is dis- 
tinctly felt by all readers who have any ear for original and haunting 
poetic melody. The strange names of places are mere musical coinages 
to fit the rime and rhythm of the poem. In this respect it may be 
compared with Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." 

EXPLANATORY: 

422 : 4. lonesome October. Virginia Poe died on January 30, but 
Poe prefers to place the anniversary of her death in October because 
that melancholy month better suits his purposes in this poem. 

422 : 5. immemorial year. That is, because of its record of deep 
sorrow this year seemed to reach back beyond memory. 

422 : ID. Titanic. Poe uses the capital T here, thus indicating 
his conscious reference to the Titans, the giants whom the. gods on 
Mount Olympus overthrew. 

422 : 12. Psyche. Poe was fond of personifying the soul thus. 
See "To Helen," line 14. 

422 : 14. scoriae rivers. Rivers of lava. Poe apparently coined 
the adjective from scoria, the slag or dross from melted metal. 

422 : 19. boreal pole. According to the Standard Dictionary, which 
quotes Poe's line in illustration, this means either the north pole or 
the south pole. Which did Poe probably have in mind? 

422 : 25. night of all nights. The anniversary of the death of his 
beloved. See lines 86 and 89 in corroboration. 

422 : 28. tarn. Pool, lake; a favorite word with Poe. 

422 : 29. ghoul-haunted. Ghouls were anciently supposed to rob 
graves and eat corpses. This is another favorite Poe word. 

422 : 30. senescent. Growing late; literally, growing old, from 
Latin senex, old. 



6i8 American Literary Readings 

423: 37- A starte' s bediamonded crescent. Astarte was the Assyrian 
and Phoenician goddess of the moon, and was usually represented 
with a crescent or new moon. Note Poe's beautiful imagery here. 

423 : 39- Di'an. Diana, the Roman goddess of the moon, the 
chase, and chastity. 

423 : 44. the Lion. The constellation Leo, the fifth sign of the 
zodiac. 

423 : 46. Lethean. Causing forgetfulness. Lethe is the river of 
oblivion in Hades. 

424 : 64. Sibyllic. Prophetic. In classical mythology the Sibyls 
are women endowed with prophetic powers. 

424 : 77. legended tomb. Having a legend inscribed on it. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the tone of this poem? I2) Make a list of the 
principal words and phrases which help to intensify this tone. Have 
the selection of the time of year and the strange proper names anything 
to do with the dominant tone? (3) How do you interpret the poet's 
companion. Psyche? (4) What is the theme of the poem? (5) Make 
an outline showing the development of the theme. (Suggestion: 
the setting; mood or state of mind of the lover; the talk with Psyche; 
the rising of Astarte; Psyche's warning and fearful distress; the calming 
of Psyche's fears; the tomb of Ulalume; the effect of the memory of 
her death.) (6) If the rising of Astarte with her crescent, or new 
moon, means Poe's new love, whom does Dian represent? (7) Could 
the Lion be taken as the symbolic guardian of the poet's heart? (8) 
Interpret Psyche's mistrust and fearful distress. (9) How did the 
poet quiet her fears? (10) What do you think is the full meaning of 
"tempted her out of her gloom" and "conquered her scruples"? If 
Poe was trying to make up his mind to marry, what finally stopped 
him from doing so? (10) Show why the last stanza is a satisfactory 
ard artistic close. (Note how it reverts to the opening lines, and how 
it reechoes parts of the first and third stanzas almost verbatim.) 
(11) The stanzas range from nine to thirteen lines of three-stressed 
anapestic rhythm. Scan one or two stanzas, noting any variations or 
irregularities that occur. (12) Study the rime scheme. Is the model 
consistently followed? Notice that each stanza is made on two riming 
sounds, one feminine and one masculine. (13) What repetition and 
refrain effects do you notice? 

Eldorado (Poe) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"Eldorado" is one of Poe's latest poems, appearing first in Flag 
of Our Country, April 21, 1849. 

EXPLANATORY: 

425 : 6. Eldorado. From two Spanish words, el, the, and dorado, 
gilded, the name of a fictitious city or country of fabulous gold supposed 
by the Spaniards to be located somewhere in central South America. 
Poe uses it as a symbol for the unattainable ideal or aspiration of the 
human spirit. 



The Notes 619 



425: 21. Valley of the Shadow. Referring to Psalms 23:4, and 
implying that the ideal is reached only after death. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What stages of life do you find recorded in the four stanzas? 
Make a statement of the theme of the poem, and outline it by giving a 
topic for each of the stanzas. (2) Give details showing the changing 
mood and appearance of the knight from stanza to stanza. (3) What 
is symbolized by the "pilgrim shadow" or "shade"? (4) Give your 
interpretation of the meaning of the "Mountains of the Moon" and the 
"Valley of the Shadow." (5) Is there a note of resolution or courage 
in the last stanza? (6) Apply the thought of the poem to Poe's 
poetical aspirations. (7) Apply it to your own aspirations. Can 
you draw a lesson from the poem for your own guidance in life? (8) 
Compare the poem with Longfellow's "Excelsior." (9) Analyze the 
meter and stanzaic form, noting all irregularities and their effect on 
the quality of the verse. 

Spring (Timrod) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem was written in 1862, the first year of the Civil War. It 
indicates the direction Timrod's genius was taking and gives us some 
hint of what he might have accomplished in poetry had not the war 
hastened his decline in health and fortune. The last five stanzas show 
the state of mind of the poet and the people of the South toward an 
army of invasion from the North. At the close of the terrible struggle, 
Timrod, though broken in health and spirit, could still write encour- 
agingly to his fellow-citizens, " Spring is the true Reconstructionist, — a 
reconstructionist in the best and most practical sense. There is not 
a nook in the land in which she is not at this moment exerting her 
influence in preparing a way for the restoration of the South." 

EXPLANATORY: 

430 • 5- jasmine. This is the yellow jasmine, one of the sweetest 
of all southern wild flowers. 

430 : 26. azure gems. This refers to the tiny little bluets which 
spring up all over the South in the early spring. 

431 • 35- enamored South. That is, the South Wind in love with 
the flowers. 

431 : 47. Dryad. A spirit or wood nymph whose life is bound up 
with that of a tree. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) In what tone or mood is the first movement of the poem written? 
The second? (2) Do you think the two lyric motifs in the poem are 
successfully blended or do you think the lyric unity would have been 
better if the last five stanzas had been omitted? (3) What do you 
understand by "nameless pathos"? (4) Explain the figurative 
expressions in the second stanza. What do you think of this stanza 
as to its poetic quality, especially in its appeal to the esthetic sense? 
{5) In plain prose we say that the sap rises in the trees in the early 



620 American Literary Readings 

spring. How does Timrod express this poetically? (6) How does 
he present the coloring of the maple and the elm buds? (7) What 
use does he suggest for the bluets? (8) What other flowers are men- 
tioned? Does the poet give simply a catalogue of them, or does he 
designate each by some significant touch of beauty? (9) Explain 
lines 29-32. (10) Lowell emphasized June as the month of spring 
in New England. Is Timrod right in presenting May here? Why? 

(11) What caused the outburst of feeling in the last five stanzas? 

(12) Draw the contrast of spring in war time and in peace as suggested 
by the ooem. 



Ode (Timrod) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This Ode was sung in Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, in 1867, 
on the occasion of the memorial service held on the day set apart 
for decorating the graves of the Confederate dead. It is one of the 
last productions of Timrod, and may in a sense be called his swan 
song. In its classic restraint and finished beauty it may well be 
considered his finest poem. It is called, simply, "Ode," because of its 
elevated quality and its seriousness of tone. The English poet William 
Collins wrote a poem very similar in form and theme, which he called 
"Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746," commemorating the 
British soldiers who fell in the War of the Austrian Succession. Timrod 
has often been compared with Collins, in his life and poetic temperament 
as well as in individual poems, so it seems desirable to reproduce here 
CoUins's "Ode," that the two poems may be more closely compared. 

ODE 
Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746 

"How sleep the brave who sink to rest 
By all their country's wishes blest! 
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold. 
Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there shall- dress a sweeter sod 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 

"By fairy hands their knell is rung. 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung; 
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey. 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay; 
And Freedom shall awhile repair. 
To dwell a weeping hermit there!" 

EXPLANATORY: 

432 : 2. fallen cause. The cause of State Sovereignty, or the 
right of the Southern States to secede and form a Confederacy. 

432 : 3. marble column. A commemorative bronze figure of a 
color-bearer upon a granite base has since been erected in Magnolia 
Cemetery. 

432 : 5. In seeds of laurel. The laurel or bay has been from 
ancient times a symbol of honor. The poet here conceives that 
the honor due to the southern soldiers is yet only in the seed, but in 
imagination he sees the full-blown blossoms, even while the seeds are 
still in the earth. 



The Notes 621 

432 : 9. behalf. A poetical condensation for "in behalf of." 
432: 10. storied. Containing or suggestive of the stories of valor. 

Compare Gray's use of the word in his famous Elegy, where storied 
means pictured images or inscriptions: 

"Can stoned urn or animated bust 
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?" 

433 • 13- shades. Spirits. 

433 • 15- camwn-moulded pile. A lofty commemorative monu- 
ment made or molded from the brass cannon used in the war. 
433 : 16. bay. Charleston Bay. Locate it on your map. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What concrete object is given strong emphasis in line i? This 
may be called the initial impulse or occasion of the emotion of 
sorrowful reverence for the dead heroes. (2) Give a phrase for the 
principal thought in each of the five stanzas. Notice that stanzas I 
and 2 belong to the first thought movement, while 3 and 4 are the 
answering thought, and in stanza 5, the most beautiful of all, the two 
thought movements are united into a grand climax. (3) What 
figure is suggested by the word craves? (4) Can you think of a full- 
blown blossom in a seed that is yet in the earth? Can you think 
of a shaft in the stone "waiting for its birth"? This is an extremely 
imaginative stanza. (5) What does the poet mean by "blossom of 
your fame"? (6) Has the prophecy of stanza 2 been realized? (7) 
Explain "your sisters." (8) Interpret fully the thought in stanza 4. 
(9) Exactly what do the words valor and beauty mean? Notice the 
fine effect of the two adjectives used with these words. (10) Study 
closely the sad, solemn beauty of the picture in stanza 4. (11) The 
stanzaic structure is extremely simple and natural, but this quality of 
simplicity and naturalness adds to the subdued tone and chaste imagery 
of the whole lyric. Determine the rhythm and the number of stresses 
in the lines, and read the poem slowly and quietly, to bring out fully 
its tonal quality. (12) Memorize the last stanza. (13) In a brief 
composition make a comparison of CoUins's "Ode" (see the intro- 
ductory note above) with Timrod's. 



Aspects of the Pines (Hayne) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This is a good sample of Hayne's nature lyrics, of which he wrote 
a great number. • 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the plan of this poem? Do you think it is a good one? 
Why? (2) Give a title for each of the three distinct pictures and thus 
make an outline of the lyric movement. (3) Are the adjectives in the 
first line well chosen? Why are these adjectives repeated in line 5? 
(4) Why is the foliage called fadeless, line 3? (5) Trace the effect 
of the presence or absence of the breezes throughout the stanzas. 
(6) Do you admire the picture of twilight in the last two lines? Why 
is the star called tremulous? 



62 2 American Literary Readings 

Composed in Autumn (Hayne) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This sonnet was included in the 1857 volume called Sonnets and 
Other Poems. 

EXPLANATORY: 

437 : 4. augury. Omen of the future, forecast. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the initial impulse of this lyric? (2) Analyze the 
thought movement by quatrains. (Suggestion: The first quatrain 
suggests the scene or setting and states the adverse analogies suggested 
to different minds; the second and third quatrains describe in full the 
optimistic interpretation of life; the final couplet clinches the analogy 
by making the comparison suggested in the opening quatrain.) (3) 
What single figurative idea or analogy runs through the entire poem? 
Does this help to unify the impression? (4) Work out the rime scheme 
and determine whether it is the regular (Italian) model or the irregular 
(English) model. (See the paragraph on the sonnet, in the section on 
English metrics.) 

Song of the Chattahoochee (Lanier) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem first appeared in Scott's Magazine, Atlanta, Georgia, in 
1877. It is perhaps the most widely known of all Lanier's works; 
and naturally, for it is so simple and beautiful in its conception and 
so musical and artistic in its execution that even the youngest readers 
find pleasure in it. Professor Callaway speaks of this as "Lanier's 
most finished nature poem._. . .the most musical of his productions." 
It is more than a nature poem, being in reality an artistic expression 
of the ideal of service. 

EXPLANATORY: 

443 : I, 2. Habersham . . . Hall. Locate these counties in 
Georgia, and trace the entire course of the Chattahoochee. 

443 : 6. or . . . or. Used for either . . .or, as often in poetry. 
See if you can find in your reading a similar use of nor . . . nor for 
neither . . . nor. 

443 : 17. for to. An archaic form, used also in line 43. Can you 
point out instances of the use of this idiom in the King James version 
of the Bible? 

444 : 38. Made lures. Offered allurements for the water to stop. 
The idea seems to be that the water pouring over the stones makes them 
more c^azzling and attractive. 

444 ; 43. fain. Willing, yearning. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Make an outline of the poem by stanzas, using the five questions 
following this one for suggestions. (2) How much of the river's course 
is summarized in stanza i ? (3) What objects are described in stanza 2 
as delaying the water? (4) What objects attract the river in stanza 3? 
(5) What objects offer allurements in stanza 4? (6) What moral is 
drawn in stanza 5? (7) Apply the progress of thought in the poem to 
human life, stating just what allurements at the various periods of life 
tempt one from the course of service. (8) Who speaks throughout the 



The Notes 623 

poem? Does this give the poet the opportunity to imitate the sound 
of the water in his verse? Why is the name of the river not given in 
the poem? (9) Is there a similarity of tone in the first and last stanzas? 
How does this help to unify the whole? (10) The meter is typically 
four-stress iambic, but there are many variations and irregularities 
for artistic effect. Scan the poem. (11) Professor Kent in his analysis 
of this poem says: "In five stanzas, of ten lines each, alliteration occurs 
in all save twelve lines." Prove this statement by actual count, mark- 
ing the non-alliterative lines. (The lines in which Hall occurs alliterate 
with the preceding lines containing Habersham.) (12) He also says: 
"In eleven of these twelve lines internal rhyme occurs, sometimes join- 
ing the parts of a line, sometimes uniting successive lines." Point out 
the single line which has no internal rime. (13) Memorize the poem. 
(14) Compare it with Poe's "Eldorado" and Longfellow's "Excelsior." 

The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This story appeared first in the New York World, and is now included 
in the volume called Whirligigs. It is a fine example of O. Henry's 
extravagantly humorous productions. 

EXPLANATORY: 

448 : 5. apparition. A malapropism. What is the word intended? 
448 : 8. undeleterious. What is the more ordinary synonj'm? 
448 : 10. Bill and me. Point out other examples of bad grammar 
and determine the effect of these. 

448 : 13. Philoprogenitiveness. Love of offspring. Give the ety- 
mology of the word. What is the effect of putting such large words 
in the mouths of the two desperadoes? Point out other examples. 

449 : 61. Geronimo. A celebrated Apache chieftain. 

457 • 356. Ihe Russian in a Japanese war. In the Russo-Japanese 
war of 1904-1905, the Russians got the worst of it. 

458: 390. "Great pirates of Penzance!" An exclamation which 
owes its origin to the comic opera of similar title, by Gilbert and 
Sullivan. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Summarize the plot of this story in a single sentence. (2) Is 
it based on probability? What kind of story is this, then? Does 
the subversion of actuality add to the humor? (3) Point out examples 
of comic exaggeration and extravaganza. (4) Point out other humor- 
ous effects, such as malapropisms, incongruities, slangy words and 
expressions, comic situations, burlesque effects. (5) What sort of 
language do the two desperadoes simulate? Where does Red Chief 
get his romantic expressions? Is there any satiric irony in these imita- 
tions? (6) How is the opening sentence echoed in the third and fourth 
paragraphs? (7) What is the appropriateness of the allusion to David 
and Goliath in lines 182-184? (8) Why did Sam ask Bill if there was 
any heart disease in his family (line 342)? (9) At what point is the 
climax of the story reached? Could there be any more surprising 
outcome than Ebenezer Dorset's counter proposition? (10) What is 
the final comic exaggeration? Could anything be more ridiculous 
than the flight of the two desperadoes? (11) Test this story by Poe's 
requirements as set forth on p. 385. 



624 American Literary Readings 

The Last Leaf (O. Henry) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

"The Last Leaf," now included in the volume called The Trimmed 
Lamp, is a typical example of the O. Henry surprise-ending story. 
The blending of humor and pathos gives a distinct significance to the 
title of the story, as may be readily suggested by a reference to the 
quality of Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem with the same title. See 
note on p. 591. 

EXPLANATORY: 

460: I, Washington Square. A section in New York City. 

460: 10. north windows. Why do artists always want north 
windows? 

460: 17. table d'hote. . . . "Delmonico's." A public or common 
table; a meal as served in a hotel or restaurant. Delmonico's is a 
famous and expensive restaurant in New York; hence a cheap Eighth 
Street restaurant may be facetiously called a "Delmonico's." 

461 : 39. pharmacopeia. The large, authoritative reference book 
containing the formulae, qualities, doses, etc., of drugs. O. Henry 
was himself a drug clerk in his youth, and hence he was perfectly 
familiar with the United States Pharmacopeia. 

462: 80. ivy vine. This is the American ivy or Virginia creeper 
rather than the English ivy, since the leaves of the latter do not fall 
off in the winter. See also the reference to "serrated edges" in line 
185. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Show how rapidly and yet vividly the setting is sketched in 
and how deftly the characters are introduced. (2) In what paragraph 
does the action of the story begin? (3) What is the opposing force 
as introduced in this paragraph? What advantage is gained by 
personifying the disease? (4) Why is the doctor so insistent that 
Johnsy's recovery depends largely upon her wanting some particular 
thing? (5) Sue mentions the painting of the Bay of Naples (line 42), 
and the doctor suggests that he would like Johnsy to ask a question 
about styles (line 54). Are these points alluded to again? (See 
lines 215, 218, and 232.) (6) What humorous effect is intended in 
the passage describing Sue's sketch of the cowboy for the magazine 
story? Do you think that in the circumstances under which she 
was drawing she might be pardoned for making such a mistake? (7) 
How is Johnsy's counting managed so as to arouse the reader's in- 
terest? Do you understand at first the significance of her counting? 
(8) Do you think Sue's fib about ten to one was justifiable? (9) Why 
does Sue make the joke about "selling the editor"? (10) Johnsy 
speaks of her dying as a turning loose and floating down like one of 
the ivy leaves. Is this fancy well expressed in the text? At what 
point is the fancy referred to again? (11) Why is it necessary in the 
progress of the plot that Sue should go down just before dark to seek 
Behrman? (12) Give a brief sketch of Behrman's appearance and 
character as you conceive them from the author's portrayal. (13) Is 
there any humor intended in Behrman's dialect? Why are his speeches 
more pathetic than humorous? (14) At what points in the story is 



The Notes 625 

Behrman's masterpiece referred to? Is this significant in the catas- 
trophe and denouement of the story? (15) Why did Sue pull down 
the shade when she entered her room and found Johnsy asleep? Do 
you think she knew what Behrman was going to do? Give passages 
to prove your answer. (16) Why is it necessary to describe the last 
leaf in full on p. 465? Is there a later reference to the colors mentioned 
here? (17) Do you suspect the truth in regard to the last ivy leaf 
when you first read of Behrman's case of pneumonia, or are you 
thoroughly surprised when you read the last paragraph? (18) Why 
is Behrman's case of illness related in so rapid and sketchy a manner? 
Is the author probably hurrying to a conclusion before you can guess 
the outcome? (19) How do you like this type of story? Is there a 
deeper note underlying the light and half-humorous style of the 
narrative? (20) Point out five humorous touches, such as the refer- 
ence to the collector "meeting himself coming back"; and five striking 
descriptive phrases, such as "the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer." 

Gettysburg Address (Lincoln) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

After the battle fought at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1-2, 
1863, thousands of soldiers, northern and southern, were buried on the 
battlefield. It was decided to make a national cemetery here, and on 
November 19, 1863, a vast concourse of people met to dedicate the 
ground. Edward Everett, the distinguished orator from Massachu- 
setts, made the principal address on this occasion, speaking for about 
two hours. Then Lincoln rose and spoke briefly, summing up in a few 
words the whole thought and pent-up emotion of the audience and the 
nation. Everett's address is described as a finished and scholarly 
production with all the graces of literary culture; but Lincoln's speech, 
' voicing as it did the real sentiment of the people, in its simple words, 
direct and straightforward utterance, and profound moral earnestness 
and sincerity, has become one of the priceless literary heritages of our 
nation. Perhaps there cannot be found a more striking example of 
the difference between a faultless literary form without the real breath 
of life in it and a simple, heart-felt expression of true, throbbing 
literature. Everett himself in a note to Lincoln the day after the 
dedicatory exercises remarked on this fact, practically admitting that 
he had not been able in two hours to touch as Lincoln had done in two 
minutes the central idea of the occasion. 

EXPLANATORY: 

467 : I . Fourscore and seven years. To just what date and event 

does Lincoln here refer? * 

467 : 6. a great battle-field. Look up in your United States history 
the description of this battle, and if possible consult a map of the 
whole region around Gettysburg, a section of which has now become 
a great national park. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

( I ) In what terse way is the whole of our history as a nation brought 
vividly before the minds of the audience? (2) Why would it have been 
inappropriate to dwell on the details of our past history? (3) By what 
rhetorical means is the present crisis vitally connected with our first 



626 American Literary Readings 

great national crisis? Repeat the two phrases which mark this con- 
nection. (4) What central word is carried over into the third para- 
graph as a connecting link, and what three strong clauses in parallel 
construction are placed side by side to emphasize the central thought? 

(5) In what words does the speaker show his utter unconsciousness of 
any effort to produce a literary masterpiece? Is the previous oratorical 
effort of Edward Everett inadvertently judged in this utterance? 

(6) Do you think that the prophecy that the world wUl ' ' little note nor 
long remember" the words uttered on this occasion has been fulfilled? 
Of course it is, as Lincoln said, the deeds of the brave soldiers that really 

■ consecrated the field, — the deeds of southerners as well as northerners, 
for each side was fighting bravely for right as each conceived it, — but 
these brave deeds are more effectively enshrined in the consummate 
art of this short address than they can ever be in marble or bronze 
or national park. (7) What is the most frequently quoted phrase in 
the speech? (8) This speech has been called "the greatest oration 
in American history." Do you agree with this judgment? Give some 
reasons for your decision. (9) Compare the speech with other notable 
utterances, such as Patrick Henry's "Speech on Liberty," Washing- 
ton's "Farewell Address," Webster's "First Bunker Hill Oration," etc. 



The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

Early in 1865 Mark Twain was in Calaveras County, California, 
trying his luck at pocket mining with his friend Jim Gillis. The weather 
was cold, rainy, and disagreeable, and the two friends worked inter- 
mittently on their claim. They spent a good deal of time loafing in 
the tavern at Angel's Camp. A retired Illinois River pilot by the name 
of Ben Coon, "a solemn, fat-witted person," used to tell stories when-' 
ever he could find willing listeners, and Clemens and Gillis were his 
most frequent victims. On one dreary, rainy day he told them in his 
slow, monotonous fashion the stor_y of the jumping frog owned by 
a man named Coleman. Clemens was particularly struck with the 
serious style of the narrator and the humor of the story, and so he 
made the following note for future reference: "Coleman with his 
jumping frog — bet stranger $50 — stranger had no frog, and C. got him 
one: — in the meantime stranger filled C's frog full of shot and he 
couldn't jump. The stranger's frog won." Gillis and Clemens used 
to try to keep up their courage in working their claim by repeating 
over and over parts of this story just as they had heard it, preserving 
the serious and solemn manner of the narrator, with never a smile 
or suggestion of humor. The two men finally abandoned their claim 
just as they were on the verge of uncovering a rich pocket of gold. 
Other miners found the treasure, but as Mark Twain's biographer 
asserts, "The Jumping Frog" nugget was worth more than all the gold 
in that rich pocket. 

Charles F. Browne, better known under his nom de plume of Artemus 
Ward, was publishing a book in New York, and when he heard Mark 
Twain's "Jumping Frog" story, he asked permission to use it. Twain 
sent it on to New York; but it arrived too late for the book and was 
handed over to the Saturday Press, where it appeared November 19, 
1865, under the title of "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog." Its 



The Notes 627 

success was immediate and astonishing. It was copied, quoted, and 
retold all over the country. Mark Twain literally jumped into fame 
on the back of this celebrated frog. The story was published with 
other sketches in the spring of 1867, and it has remained one of the prime 
favorites in the public regard. So widely known did the story become 
that a professor of Greek decided to condense it, put the scene back 
two thousand years in ancient Boeotia with an Athenian and a Boeotian 
as the two principal characters, and thus make a good exercise for his 
book in Greek prose composition. He did not think it necessary to give 
credit for the source of so well known a story, and so another professor 
called Mark Twain's attention to the fact that the germ story was 
found in the Greek and offered to show him the original. It was many 
years before Ivlark Twain came to realize that the Greek professor had 
borrowed his story, and in the meantime he published in the North 
American Review a sketch called "Private History of the 'Jumping 
Frog' Story," in which he declared his ignorance of the existence of the 
Greek story and explained the wonderful similarity between the two 
versions as a plain case of history repeating itself. Thus the joker was 
for once made the victim of a double-barreled joke. 

EXPLANATORY: 

477. Calaveras. A county in east central California. 

477 • 3- Simon Wheeler. Ben Coon, otherwise called Ros Coon, 
Coon Drayton, etc. See introductory note. 

478 : 46. flume. A trough used to convey water in mining 
industries. 

479 • 97- ornery. Ordinary, mean, low-down. 

482 : 207. hysted. Hoisted; the old pronunciation of oi is still 
preserved in dialectal usage, as in He, bile, for oil, boil, etc. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the main value of the introduction? (The point of 
the story is as largely centered in the character who tells it and in the 
manner in which it is told as in the humor of the story itself.) (2) 
Do you see any irony in the name of the camp and in the identification 
of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley with Jim Smiley? (3) Describe how Simon 
Wheeler cornered his victim and told the story (paragraph 3). Why 
does this add materially to the humor of the story? (4) Discuss the 
method of development used in bringing out the character of Jim 
Smiley. (5) Give examples of some of the things that Jim would 
bet on. Which of these do you think most amusing? (6) What is the 
appropriateness of naming the bull pup Andrew Jackson? (7) What 
climactic effect is there in the order and treatment of the different 
betting episodes? (8) What humorous effects do you note in the 
description of "Dan'l Webster"? Why is the frog so named? (9) 
Tell the whole of the frog episode in your own language. Is the story 
itself very funny? (10) Now read this episode in Simon Wheeler's 
style, and note how much is added to it by the dialect, quaint expres- 
sions, and slow, serious, monotonous drawl in which Simon recited it. 
(11) Is the conclusion skillfully conceived and executed? How did 
the visitor finally break away from Simon? (12) Name the four 
characters in the order of their importance in the stor>'. 



62 8 American Literary Readings 

Tennessee's Partner (HarteJ 

INTRODUCTORY: 

"Tennessee's Partner" belongs to the early group of California 
mining stories; by many readers it is ranked as Bret Harte's master- 
piece in the short story. Its theme is the unswerving loyalty of one 
partner to another. Placer miners usually worked in pairs in the early 
days of Western mining, but to be a man's partner meant mui-h more 
than to enter into a mere business relationship; as Bret Harte himself 
said, "it was to be his friend through good and ill report, in adversity, 
or fortune, to cleave to him and no other." "Tennessee's Partner" is 
built upon a slight basis of fact in the lives of two real partners, but 
Harte has used the author's privilege of making such changes and addi- 
tions as are needed to enhance the artistic effects of the story. Two 
men named Chamberlain and Chaffee were the originals respectively 
of Tennessee and his partner. They came to California about 1849, 
the date of the "gold fever" rush to the West. Chamberlain was 
accused of stealing some miner's gold and was about to be hanged by 
the vigilance committee of the camp. Chaffee, who believed him 
guiltless, defended him so vigorously that the committee released the 
accused miner. The two then became inseparable partners and lived 
together to a ripe old age, earning their living by continuing their 
mining operations. Out of this simple incident the author has created 
a permanent work of art. The story first appeared in the Overland 
Monthly, 1869, frora which source it is here reprinted. 

EXPLANATORY: 

486 : 5. "Dungaree Jack." Dungaree is a coarse cotton cloth 
used for sailors' working clothes 

486 : 7. " Saleratus Bill." Saleratus is cooking soda. ' 

486 : 1 1 . iron pyrites. An iron ore of bright yellow crystals which 
look like flecks of gold. The humorous effect, of course, is brought out 
by mispronunciation, as well as by the fact that the mild, inoffensive 
man is nicknamed "Iron Pirate." 

486 : 22. relative title. That is, a title showing his relation of part- 
ner to Tennessee. 

486 : 24. Poker Flat. Poker Flat, Sandy Bar, Red Dog, Roaring 
Camp, -were typical names of California mining settlements. For 
fuller particulars of the camp here referred to, read "The Outcasts of 
Poker Flat." 

488 : 70. iveppings. Is this intended humorously by Tennessee? 
Give the correct spelling. 

488 : 88. "/ call." A term in a card game, meaning "I demand 
the show of your hand." The stranger's reply of "Two bowers and an 
ace" and Tennessee's answer, "That takes me," continue the humorous 
allusions to the game of euchre. Why are the two revolvers called 
"bowers," and the bowie-knife an "ace"? Find other phrases in the 
story borrowed from card playing (see pp. 487, 489, 491 and 492). 

493 1262. "diseased." The pun on deceased is evident. Do j^ou 
think that Tennessee's partner was conscious of any witticism? 

494 : 283. catafalque. An elaborately decorated scaffold for bearing 
the dead. Note the pathetic contrast implied in the adjective homely 

494 : 287. Jack Folinsbee. Harte had a way of repeating his char' 



The Notes 629 

acters from story to story, always preserving their salient charac- 
teristics. Jack Folinsbee is a prominent character in the stories "An 
Heiress of Red Dog" and "The Romance of Madroiio Hollow." 
Similarly the wag "Boston," mentioned in the opening paragraph, 
p. 486, appears in the same capacity in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." 
Look up the following words and add them to your working vocabu- 
lary: constrained, prototype, implacable, preternatural, condoned, amity, 
site, sanity. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the theme of the story? Has the author made his pur- 
pose perfectly clear? (2) Just what has the author added to the 
original incident, and why? (See introductory note.) (3) Which ele- 
ment is more prominent, plot, setting, or characterization? (4) Divide 
the story into an introduction, minor incidents, main incident, climax, 
and conclusion, and thus make a topical outline of the story. (5) Does 
the author successfully present the atmosphere of a mining camp? 
Point out several "local color" effects. (6) What humorous touches 
do you note in the opening paragraph? In Tennessee's Partner's 
courtship? In Tennessee's arrest and trial? (7) Point out at least 
four instances of pathos. Does the author elaborate at these points, 
or does he merely state the situation, leaving the reader to detect for 
himself the poignant suffering of the hero? (8) Which element is 
more prominent, humor or pathos? How are the two elements blended 
throughout the story? (9) With what artistic effects does the writer 
weave in his descriptive passages? Examine particularly the passages 
beginning "It was a warm night," p. 488; "For he was not, certainly," 
p. 490; "But the beauty of the midsummer morning," p. 492; "As the 
cart drew up," p. 493; "The way led through," p. 494. (10) Study the 
two characters closely and be prepared to make an oral report on each. 
Do you think Tennessee was worthy of his partner's devotion? (11) 
Examine for simplicity, natural eloquence, and poignant pathos the 
speeches of Tennessee's Partner at the trial and the funeral. What 
would have been the effect of making these speeches more formal and 
dignified? (12) Do you think the author has over-elaborated the 
dream scene of the conclusion, or has he given just enough to make 
the desired impression? Why is Tennessee described in this scene 
as "sober and his face a-shining"? How does the last word uttered 
by the dying man unify and emphasize the theme of the story? 

Grizzly (Harte) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem first appeared in the Overland Monthly in 1869. Bret 
Harte had himself once met with a huge grizzly in a lonely, steep- 
sided canon. Knowing that flight or other evidence of fear on his part 
might excite curiosity and possibly a fight on the bear's part, Harte 
kept straight on his course, and when he approached within ten yards 
of the animal, the bear turned, scrambled up the side of the canon, 
and disappeared. It is interesting to note that Harte used a grizzly 
standing astride a railroad track as the emblem for the Overland 
Monthly, of which he was editor from its beginning in 1868 to 1870. 
He said that his idea was that the bear standing at bay and looking 



630 American Literary Readings 

at the (invisible) train approaching represented the beginning of the 
conflict between savage life and advancing civilization. 

EXPLANATORY: 

497 : 1 1 . plantigrade. Walking on the sole of the foot as a man 
walks. 

497 : 24. Friar Tuck. The jovial priest who was associated with 
Robin Hood in Sherwood forest. For a full portrait of Friar Tuck, 
the jolly hermit of Copmanhurst, see Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, chap- 
ters XVI, XVII, and others. 

497 : 25. tithe and dole. Tithe is the tenth of one's income, which 
was the priest's due. Dole is a gratuity or extra gift for charity or 
for the priest's comfort. Note how the poet maintains throughout the 
stanza the imaginative comparison of the grizzly with the priest. 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITE.RA RY ANAL YSIS: 

(i) How are both the character and the appearance of the bear 
presented in stanza one? (2) Why is the bear's habitat called "Epi- 
curean retreats"? (3) Why is the comparison of the bear with Friar 
Tuck a happy one? (See the introductory note.) (4) Does the poem 
as a whole give you a vivid conception of the grizzly? (5) In what 
rhythm and meter is the poem written? How should exploits and 
Epicurean (lines 6 and 20) be pronounced to bring out the proper 
rhythm? Would you call these blemishes or merely examples of 
poetic license? 

Kit Carson's Ride (Miller) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

When Miller published his first volume in London in 1870, it was 
so well received that the editor of the Oxford Magazine asked him to 
contribute something to that journal. The result was "Kit Carson's 
Ride." The poem was later revised, as is indicated in the following 
note printed in Vol. II of the 1909 edition of his complete works: 
"This poem, 'Kit Carson,' was not in any of my four first books, and 
so hag not been rightly revised till now. It was too long for the tumul- 
tuous and swift action; and then the end was coarse and unworthy the 
brave spirit of Kit Carson. I have here cut and changed it much; as 
I cut and changed all the matter of my three preceding books in London 
when I cut and compressed all I had done worth preserving into the 
Songs of the Sierras.'^ 

EXPLANATORY: 

502. Kit Carson. Christopher Carson was a famous trapper and 
scout who spent his life in the Far West and became famous as the 
typical scout and hunter of that country. His life reads like a romance, 
and many of his adventures have been incorporated in stories of 
western life. The incident related here is probably purely imaginary. 

502 : 16. badger blind. The badger is a burrowing animal, noc- 
turnal in its habits, and hence cannot see well in the daylight. This 
has given rise to the popular impression that the badger is blind. Pache, 
the name of the horse, is probably a reduced form of Apache. 

502 : 22. Brazos. A long river in Texas. 



The Notes 631 

THO UGHT Q UESTIONS A ND LITERA RY ANAL YSIS: 

_ (i) What is the main value of the introductory stanza? Do you 
think it gives an adequate expression of the poet's enthusiasm for the 
wild, free, generous western life? (2) After this poem, what plan does 
the author choose for the presentation of the story? Who does the 
talking? (3) Tell the story of the ride. (4) Point out two of the 
most vivid descriptive passages. (5) Do you catch the rapid galloping 
movement of the anapestic rhythm? Scan four lines beginning "Not 
a word," line 71. (6) Compare the form and spirit of this poem 
with Browning's "How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
Aix." (Miller met Browning at a breakfast at Archbishop Trench's 
just about the time he got the commission to write this poem, and he 
asked permission to "borrow the measure and spirit of his 'Good News' 
for a prairie fire on the plains, driving btiffalo and all other life before 
it into a river." Browning laughingly asked Miller why he did not 
borrow the rhythm from Vergil as he himself had done.) 

Coltunbus (Miller) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

In the final edition of his works Miller says this poem was singled 
out by the London Athaeneum as the best American poem. He 
dissented from this judgment, saying, "It is far from that; even I have 
done better; too. much like a chorus." There are probably more 
characteristic poems to be found in his work, especially the poems 
dealing more specifically with western life and scenery, but none of his 
productions have met a warmer popular response than this stirring 
presentation of heroic determination. 

EXPLANATORY: 

505 : I. Azores. A group of islands, the last of which is a little 
more than a thousand miles west of Portugal. 

505 : 2. Gates of Hercules. Strait of Gibraltar. Look up the 
reference to the Pillars of Hercules in a classical mythology. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Visualize the scene and characters and determine just what 
is the state of affairs on the ships. (2) Why is it a good plan to allow 
the mate to do the talking for the crew? (3) Why are the words of 
Columbus, the admiral, always given at the end of the stanzas? (4) 
The real meaning of the poem is couched in these constantly repeated 
words. Explain just what the real theme is. (5) How is the emotional 
tension increased from stanza to stanza? Do you note any climactic 
effect in the plan? (6) What is the meaning of "a spray of salt wave" 
in lines 1 1 and 12? (7) What is the effect of the repetition in Hne 25? 

(8) Expound the figure in lines 26-28, and express your opinion of it. 

(9) What other striking figure do you find in this stanza? (10) Does 
the poet make you feel that something dreadful would have happened 
if land had not been sighted just at the right moment? What do you 
think might have occurred? (11) What imaginative touch do you 
find regarding our future flag in the last stanza? (12) For the sake 
of its heroic spirit and inspiring optimism in the face of difficulties, the 
whole class should memorize this poem. 



632 American Literary Readings 

In the Firelight (Field) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

Field made no pretense to religious convictions and never allied 
himself with any denomination, but his poems are so full of the Christ 
spirit and childlike faith in God that no one can doubt that "he walked 
in the light of the love of God." This poem clearly indicates his 
fundamental belief in God and the efhcacy of prayer. The poem was 
written in 1885. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the mood of the poet? Does the setting of the poem 
harmonize with this mood? (2) What is the effect of the child's 
prayer on the poet's musing? (3) Are there any unusual words or 
strained allusions in the poem? What is it, then, that gives the very 
high poetical quality to the selection? (4) Do you like this kind of 
poetry? (5) Determine the meter and rime scheme. (6) By what 
device are the first and last stanzas united and the poem thus satis- 
factorily rounded out? 

Dutch Lullaby (Field) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem was first printed in the Chicago Daily News, March, 1889. 
It has been exquisitely set to music by Reginald >De Koven, and if 
possible the class should arrange to hear some good singer interpret 
the lyric as set to music. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) Just what are Wynken, Blynken, Nod, and the wooden shoe 
intended to symbolize? Where is this revealed? (2) Why are 
Wynken and Blynken so spelled (see the title)? (3) What is the 
effect on your imagination as you read the stanzas? Point out some 
of the exquisite imaginative touches in the description of the fishing 
voyage. (4) Would you say that this poem has. a strong esthetic 
appeal? Explain in just what its beauty primarily consists. (5) 
The rhythm is a combination of iambic and anapestic feet arranged 
in four-stressed and three-stressed lines alternately rimed. The refrain 
in each stanza is arranged in monometer, or one-stressed lines, for slow 
rendition, as if the little one were falling to sleep. Scan the first stanza. 
(6) Read the poem in the most sympathetic approximation to the 
poet's own mood that you can command. 

Afterwhiles (Riley) 

INTRODUCTORY: 

This poem was written as a Proem for the volume called Afterwhiles 
published in 1887. It illustrates the soft, dreamy, appealing, senti- 
mental quality of Riley's more serious verse. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What thought runs through the entire poem? Work out the 
progress of this thought from the opening query (stanza i), through 



The Notes 633 

the various hopes and intentions that nearly every one has for some 
" afterwhiles " (stanzas 2, 3, 4), to the concluding stanza which leads 
out into the afterwhile of eternity. (3) What is the dominant tone 
and emotional quality of this poem? (4) Does the language harmonize 
with this tone and quahty? Characterize the style. (5) Do you 
detect any harsh or jarring notes in the diction? Would " 'graved 
with" or "carved with" be better in line 56? (6) Do you think the 
trochaic rhythm is appropriate for a poem of this kind? Give the 
formula for the meter and rime scheme. 



The Raggedy Man (Riley) 

INTROD UCTOR Y: 

This, which is, with "Little Orphant Annie," the most popular 
of all Riley's child-life poems, was first published in the Century Maga- 
zine, December, 1890, and in the same year included in the volume called 
Rhymes of Childhood. "The Raggedy Man was not a tramp, nor 
was he so ragged as people usually seem to think," says Riley. "He 
was just a farmer boy from some neighboring family." He is else- 
where called "the hired man," "the boy who lives on our farm," etc. 
In some editions the third, fourth, sixth, and seventh stanzas are 
omitted. 

EXPLANATORY: 

516:8. " Lizabuth Ann." She reappears in "Our Hired Girl" 
and also in other poems. 

516 : 22. rambos. A kind of late autumn apples. 

516 : 26. " The Smoot Farm." There was a farm near Riley's 
boyhood home owned hy Warner Smoot. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(i) What is the effect of the child's talk? Is the simulation of 
boy language natural? (2) What is the effect of the child's artless 
revelations about the various actions of the Raggedy Man with respect 
to the hired girl? How is this interest emphasized? (Note that wher- 
ever the two names are mentioned it is always in conjunction.) (3) In 
what climactic way is the child's regard for the Raggedy Man finally 
expressed? (4) Work out the rhythm so as to show how often ana- 
pestic feet occur, and try to determine just what gives the lilting effect 
of the poem. 

Gloucester Moors (Moody) 
INTRODUCTORY: 

This excellent lyric was first published in Scribners Magazine for 
December, 1900, and in the next year included as the initial poem 
in Moody's first volume of verse, a position which it retains in the 
final edition of his complete poems (1912). In its combination of 
pure lyricism, imaginative power, and genuine sympathy for the toil- 
ing masses, it is unsurpassed in recent American poetry. 



634 American Literary Readings 

EXPLANATORY: 

522 : I. Gloucester toivn. A seaport of Essex County, Massa- 
chusetts, noted especially for its fishing industries. 

522 : 10. Jill-o'er-the-ground. Gill- or jill-over-the-ground is another 
name for the ground-iv>', a creeping herb having bluish-purple flowers 
and kidney-shaped leaves. 

522 : II. quaker-maid. The quaker-ladies or -maids are the tiny 
blue flowers of the plant Houstonia caerulea, commonly called bluets. 

523 : 40. phosphor ivake. That is, the moon floats in the phos- 
phorescent wake of the earth — namely, the milky way. 

523 : 55- battened hatch. . A hatch is an opening in the deck of a 
ship through which passengers or freight may be lowered into the 
hold. A battened hatch is such an opening covered with coarse canvas 
held in place by iron or wood strips called battens. 

524 : 68. moiling. Toiling, defiled. 

524 : 89. slaver's pen. The hold of a slave ship. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS AND LITERARY ANALYSIS: 

(l) Give the initial impulse of this lyric as expressed in the first 
stanza. Docs the poet seem to be writing with his eye on the objects 
he describes? (2) Point out some of the most suggestive images in 
the first stanza. At what time of day and year is the scene drawn? 
(3) What elements of decoration or beauty are added to the picture 
in the second stanza? In the third? Can you visualize each of the 
flowers and the birds from the brief suggestions here given? (4) Note 
how the poet has built up the beautiful scene which is the inspiration 
of the imaginative journey through space which is to follow. Into 
what mood has he exalted himself? (5) Work out in detail the won- 
derfully imaginative sweep of the figure in the fourth, fifth, sixth, and 
seventh stanzas, explaining for example, "With velvet plunge and soft 
upreel," "pinnace frail," "The star fleets tack and wheel and veer." 
(6) What criticism is laid upon the captains of the great world ship 
in stanza six? (7) The seventh stanza contains the real message of 
the poem. How do you interpret it? What does the "noisome hold" 
represent? Why did those on the deck refuse to give help? (8) In the 
last three stanzas the poet returns to the opening motive, but makes 
the application to the deeper thought of social sympathy for earth's 
unhappy masses, thus uniting the two parts of the poem in a vital 
way. Note particularly how the last two stanzas are balanced against 
each other so as to bring out the connection between the two parts, 
the fishing fleet coming into harbor suggesting the final harbor of the 
world ship. What two ideals are contrasted in the last stanza? 
(9) Read the poem over as many times as may be necessary to make 
you begin to comprehend its wonderful melody and beauty, its imagi- 
native power, and its deeper message of love and brotherhood. (10) 
Study the plan of the nine-line stanza, and give the formula for the 
rime scheme and meter. 



A PRONOUNCING LIST OF PROPER NAMES 
FOUND IN THE TEXT 



DiACRITICALLY MARKED ACCORDING TO WeBSTER'S INTERNATIONAL 

Dictionary, 1916; and Other Standard Authorities 



Ahernethy (ab'er ne thi) 

Acadian (d ka'di an) 

Acadie (a'ka'de') 

Achilles (d kil'ez) 

Adayes (a da'yes) 

Aeneas Sylvius (e ne'as sil'vJ us) 

Aeschylus (es'ki lus) 

Agassiz (ag'd se) 

Aladdin (d lad 'in) 

Al-Borak (al'bo rak') 

Alcott (oVkilt) 

Alhambra (al ham'brd) 

Alligewi (al i je'wi) 

Alpine (arpin) 

Amesbury (amz'ber i) 

Amonoosuck (am 6 noo'suk; 

Amontillado (a mon'tel ya'tbo) 

Amun (a'moon) 

Angelus Domini (an'je liis, 

dom'i ni) 
Apolloniiis (ap'o lo'ni ms) 
Appalachian (ap'd lach'i dn, 
Apuleius (ap'ii le'yws) 
Araxes (a rak'sez) 
Argonauta (ar'go no'td) 
Ariadne (ar'i ad'ne) 
Aristophan.es (ar'is tof'^ nez) 
Atchafalaya (ach'd fd li'd) 
Athettian (d the'ni dn) 
A tree (a tra') 
Anber (o'ber) 
Ansterlitz (os'ter lita, 
Ave Maria (a'va ma re'a) 
Avolio (a vo'li 6) 
Azores (d zorz') 

Babylonish (bab l lo'nish) 
Bacchantes (ba kan'tez) 
Bacchus (bak'«s) 
Balfour (bal'foor) 
Barca (bar'ka) 
Barclay (bar'kli) 
Basil (baz'il; ba'zil) 



Bayard (ba'drd; Fr. ba'yar') 
Beaumont (bo'mont) 
Beau Sejour (bo sa zhoor') 
Beethoven (ba'to ven) 
Benedicite (ben'e dis'i t^) 
Benedict Bellefontaine 

(ben'e dikt bel'fon tan') 
Berkshire (burk'shir) 
Blomidon (blom'i don) 
Bonduca (bon du'kd) 
Bonneville (bon'vil) 
Bozvdoin (bo'd'n) 
Brasidas (bras'i das) 
Brazos (bra'zos) 
Bruges (broo'jez; Fr. bruzh) 
Brutus (broo't;(s) 
Bukharia (bu ka re'a) 
Bulwer (borjl'wer) 
Burgundian (bur gun'di dn) 

Cacaphodel (cd caf o del) 
Calaveras (kal'd va'rds) 
Camanches (same as Comanches) 
Cambyses (kam bl'sez) 
Campbell (kam'bcl; kam'el) 
Canterbury (kan'ter ber 1) 
Carthusian (kar thu'zhdn) 
Castaly (kas'td li) 
Catalani (ka'ta la'ne) 
Cervantes (servan'tez; 

Sp. ther van'tas) 
Chaleur Bay (shd lobr') 
Chalkley (chak'li) 
Chamfort (sliaN'for') 
Chartres (shar'tr') 
Chingachgook (chin ga gook') 
Christiern (kris't^ ern) 
ChHstina (kris te'na) 
Cincinnatus (sm'sl na'tws) 
Cochecho (co chek'o) 
Coleridge (kol'rij) 
Colossus (ko Ios'ms) 
Comanches (ko m&n'cMz) 



63i 



636 



A Pronouncing List of Proper Names 



Comstock (kum'stok) 
Concord (kog'kord) 
Coureur-des-Bois 

(koo'rur'-da-bwa') 
Cowley (kou'li; formerly koo'lJ) 
Craigie (krag'I) 

Crayon, Geoffrey (jef'ri kra'on) 
Crebillon (kra'be'ydN') 
Creoles (kre'olz) 

Dante (dan'te; It. dan'ta) 
De Beranger (de ba'raN'zha') 
De Quincey (dfe kwin'si) 
Derby (dar'bi) 
De Sancto Matrimonio 

(ma tre mo'ne o) 
De Sta'el (sta'el; Fr. de stal') 
Dion (di'on) 
Divina Comniedia (de ve'na 

k6m ma'dy'a) 
Dominie Van Schaick, see Van 

Schaick 
Duplet (dii'paN') 

Easter-Beurrh (bii'ra') 
Eldorado (el do ra'do) 
Elysian (e lizh'an) 
Epaminondas {t pam'i non'dos) 
Epicurean (ep'I ku re'an) 
Elhnogenesis (eth'no jen'e sis) 
Eugenius (u je'ni us) 
Eulalie, see Saint Eulalie 
Euripides (u rip'i dez) 
Evangeline (e van'je lin) 

Faerie Queene (fa'er 1) 

Fata Alorgana (fa'ta mor ga'na) 

Faubourg St. Germain (fo'bocirg 

[Fr. fo'boor'saN] zher maN') 
Faustus (fos'tzis) 
Felician (fe lish'i an) 
Fontaine qui-bout (foN'tan 

ke bcDo') 
Fordham (for'dam) 
Fortunato (for tu na'to) 
Foiique (foo'ka') 
Froissart (froi'sart; Fr. 

frwa'sar') 

Gabriel Lajeunesse (la zhe nes') 
Gambia (gam'bi a) 
Gardinier (gar'di ni'er) 
Gascon (gas'kon) 
Gaspereau (gas pe ro') 



Gislebertus Crispinv^ 

(gJs le ber'tMS oris pi'nMs) 
Gloucester (glos'ter) 
Grand-Pre (graN'pra') 
Great Mogul (mo gul') 
Grenada (gre na'dd) 

Habersham (hab'er sham) 
Hagar (ha'gdr) 
Hamadryad (ham'd dri'ad) 
Hampden (ham'den) 
Harleian (har le'dn) 
Haverhill (ha'ver il) 
Hawaiian (ha wi'ydn) 
Heidegger (hi'deg er) 
Heine (hi'ne) 
Heinrich (hm'rlK) 
Hercules (hur'ku lez) 
Hesiod (he'si 06.) 
Hesperius (hes pe'rl us) 
Hesperus (hes'per ms) 
Hiawatha (hi'd wd'thd or 

he'd wo'thd) 
Hotel des Invalides 

(6'tel' da zaN'va'led') 
Houri (hoo'ri) 
Hyperion (hi pe'ri on) 

Ibn Haukal (ib'n how'kf' 

Ichabod (ik'd bod) 

Iliad (il'i dd) 

Ishmael (Jsh'ma el) 

Islam (is'ldm) 

Israfel (iz'rd fel; iz'rd fel; 

Jaalam (ja'd lam) 
Jargonelles (jar'go nelz') 
Joaquin (wa ken') 

Kaaterskill (k6'ter skil) 
Kaatskill (kats'kil) 
Kanaka (kan'd kd; kd nak'd) 
Kavanagh (kav'd na) 

Lanier (Id ner') 
Laodamia {\k od'd mi'd) 
Las Mariposas (mar'i po'sd) 
Launfal (lan'fal; 16n') 
Le Bruyere (la brii'yar') 
Le Carillon de Dunkerque 

(le ka'rt yoN' de dtin'kerk') 
Leonainie (leona'ng^ 
Lethean (IS the'dn) 
Letiche (la tesh') 



American Literary Readings 



637 



Leyden (ll'dcn) 
Lilinau (Ul'l n6') 
Lochiel (loK el') 
Lockerbie (lock'er bl) 
Louisbtirg (loo'i burg) 
Lotip-garou (leJo'ga'roo') 
Luckesi (l{i cha'sg) 
Lutzen (lut'sen) 

Mahinogion (mab'I no'gl on) 
Machiavelli (ma'kya vel'le) 
Maenads (me'nadz) 
Magna (md'gwa) 
Mahomet (ma hom'et) 
Mainote (mi'not) 
Alanitou (man'i too) 
Maquas (ma'kwdz) 
Marseillaise (mar'se laz'; Fr. 

niar'se'yaz') 
Martins (mar'shi ms) 
Mazzini (mat se'ne) 
Mcdoc (ma'dok') 
Melesigenes (met e sij'e n5s) 
Mclita (mel'ltd; me le'td) 
Memphremagog (mem'fre ma'gog) 
Metkusale. i (me thu'sd lem) 
Michael (mi'kel; Bib. mi'ka el) 
Minas (mi'nds) 
Minerva (mi nur'vd) 
Mizraini (miz'raim; miz ra'Jm) 
MoJrican (mo he'kan) 
Montaigne (mon tan' ; Fr. 

moN'tan'y') 
Montcalm (montkam'; Fr 

mdN kalm') 
Montreal (mont'rf 61') 
Montresor (Fr. m6x'tra's6r'') 
Moravian (mo ra'vi an) 
Mowis (mo'wes) 
Myrmidotis (mur'mi donz) 

Naiad (na'j^ad) 
Natchitoches (nafl tosh'; 

nak'i tosh') 
Natty Bumppo (bum'po) 
Nautilus (no'ti Ui's,) 
Neapolitan (ne'd pol'i ton) 
Nclis (nel'is) 
Nemesis (nem'e sis) 
Nepenthe (ne pen'the) 
Nibelungen (ne'be loong'en) 
Nicaragua (nik'd ra'gwd) 
Niccan (ni sg'cn) 



Odyssey (od'l si) 
Olatis Magnus (o la 'us) 
Olympus (6 lim'pzJs) 
Opelousas (6p'6 loo'sds) 
Oregon (or'fegon) 
Orestes (6 res'tez) 
Orion (6 ri'on) 
Ossian (osh'dn) 
Outre Mer (oo'tre mir') 
Owyhee (6 wl'he) 

Pache (pach'S) 

Patroclus (pd tro'klus) 

Paumanok (paw mdn'Sc) 

Pedro (pa'dro) 

Pericles (per'I klez) 

Petruchio (pe troo' cM o; ki o) 

Pharaoh (fa'ro; fa'ra o) 

Phi Beta Kappa (fi be'td kap'd; 
commonly fi ba'td kSp'd) 

Phidias (fid'i as) 

Phiiippi (fi lip'l) 

Phocion (fo'shi an) 

Physalia (fi sa'li d) 

Pisa (pe'sa) 

Piscataqua (pis kat'd kwd) 

Pistoriensis (pis'to ri en'sis) 

Plaquemine, Bayou of (plak'men', 
bi'oo of) 

Pleiads (pie 'y adz) 

Plotinus (plo ti'ni<s) 

Plutarch (ploo'tark) 

Polycrates (p6 lik'rd tez) 

Porto Rique (por'to rek') 

Prometheus (prome'thus; com- 
monly the lis) 

Prytaneum (prit'd ne'iJm) 

Psyche (si'ke) 

Pythoness (pith'o nes) 

Rene Leblanc (re na' le blank) 
Rhodora (ro do'rd) 
Rochefoucauld (rosh'fdo'ko') 
Rodrigo (ro dre'go) 
Roget (ro'zha') 
Romulus (rom'ii lus) 
Rossetti (ro set'e) 
Roubillac (roo'be'yak') 
Rue Donot (Fr. roo'dun o') 
Rtie Morgue (Fr. roo'morg') 

Saco (s6'ko) 
Saginaw (sag' i n6) 



63S 



A Pronouncing List of Proper Names 



St. Bernard (ber nard' ; Fr. 

saN ber'nar') 
Saint Eulalie (u'la'le') 
St. Francois (fraN'swa') 
St. Maur (mor) 
Salisbury (solz'ber 1) . 
Salmagundi (sal 'ma gun'di) 
Sanchez (san'chez) 
Sappho (saf'o) 
Saracens (sar'd senz) 
Sartor Resartus (sar'tor rfe sar'tus) 
Scipio (sip'i o) 
Sevigne (sa'ven'ya') 
Shawnee (sho ne') 
Sibyllic (si bil'ik) 
Siegfried (seg'fred; Ger. tzgK'fret) 
Siena (se a'na) 
Sierras (si er'dz) 
Sinai (si'ni; si'na l) 
Smyrna (smur'nd) 
Socrates (sok'rd tez) 
Sogd (s6g) 

Sophocles (sof'qklez) 
Sonfi'icy (sutii'i) 
Stoicis)7i (sto'i siz'm) 
Sirauss (shtrous) 
Stuyvesant (sti've sant) 
Syrian (sir'i an) 

Taygetos (ta ij 'e tiis) 
Taylor, Bayard (ba'erd) 
Teche (tesh) 

Thanatopsis (than'd top'sis) 
Thasians (tha'shi anz) 
Theagenes (the aj '6 nez) 
Themis (the'mls) 



Theocritus (the ok'ri tws) 

Thetis (the'tis) 

Thoreau (tho'ro; tho ro') 

Thyeste (the 'est') 

Tieck (tek) 

Tithonus (ti tho'iiMs) 

Tous le Bourgeois dc Chartres 

(too la boor zhwa de shar'tr') 
Trojan (tro'jcn) 

Uncas (un'kds) 
Upharsin (u far'sin) 
Urania (u ra'ni d) 
Ury (oo're) 

Valeria (va la're o) 
Van Biinimel (van bum'el) 
Vanderdonck (van'der donk) 
Van Shaick, Domini- 

(dom'i ni van skoik'j 
Vedder (ved'er) 
Vitalis (vite'lis; vi ta'lis) 
Vizetelli (viz'i tel'i) . 

Voyageur (vwa'ya'zhur') 

Wachita (w5sh'e taw) 
Walleway (wol'e wa) 
Weir (wer) 
Wicaco (wi ca'co) 
Woden (wo'den) 

Xenophon (zen'6 fon) 

Yaanek, Mount (yan'ek) 
Ypsilanti (ip'se lan'te) 



AN OUTLINE OF AIMERICAN LITERATURE 

I. COLONIAL PERIOD, 1607-1765 

The Colonial Period from the founding of the Virginia Colony, 1607, 
to the First Continental Congress, 1765, was the period of beginnings. 
It was characterized largely by descriptive and historical, didactic 
and satirical, philosophic and religious writings. Puritanism and 
Calvinistic theology were dominant, especially in New England, and 
the Cavalier spirit and ritualistic theology in the southern colonics. 
There was no fiction or drama, and what little poetry there was, was 
crude and inartistic. 

I. Southern Colonies 

Captain John Smith (1,^79-1631), A True Relation [Virginia] 
(1608) and General History [Virgi}7ia] (1624) 

William Byrd (i 674-1 744), Westover MSS [The history of the 
dividing line] (1841) 

II. New England Colonies 

The Bay Psalm Book (1640) 

William Bradford (i 588-1657) and John Winthrop (1587- 

1649), historians 
Cotton Mather (1663-1728), Magnolia Christi Americana; or 

The Ecclesiastical History of New England (1702) 
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Freedom of the Will (1754) 
Mrs. Anne Bradstreet (161 3-1672), The Tenth Muse Lately 

Sprung up in America, or Several Poems (1650) 
Michael Wigglesworth (i 631 -1705), The Day of Doom, or a 

Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment (1662) 

in. Central Colonies 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard's Almanac (1732 
-1757); Autobiography (written 1771-1789, published 1817 
and 1868); may be classed also in the following division 

John Woolman (1720-1772), Journal (1774) 

II. REVOLUTIONARY AND FORMATIVE PERIOD, 1765-1800 

From the First Continental Congress, 1765, to the close of the 
century may be called the Revolutionary or Formative Period. During 
this period the colonies gradually united, declared their independence, 
and set up a new democratic government, winning their final release 
from English influence in the War of 1812. The literature was largely 
polemical and political in character. This is the period par excellence 
of the orator and statesman. The single lyric of this period that is still 
widely read and admired is Freneau's "The Wild Honeysuckle." Our 
first novelist and distinctly literary man was Charles Brockden Brown. 



640 ^w Outline of American Literature 

I. Polemical Prose 

Hector Saint John de Crevecoeur (1731-1813), Letters from an 

American Farmer (1782) 
Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Speech on Liberty (1775) 
Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Common Sense {1776), The [Ameri- 
can] Crisis (1776-1783), The Rights of Man (1791), The Age 

of Reason (1794-1795). 
Thomas Jefferson (i 743-1 826) Declaration of Independence (i 776) 
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), James Madison (1751-1836), 

and John Jay (1745-1829), The Federalist (collected and 

published, 1788) 
George Washington (1732-1799), Farewell Address (1796) 
William Wirt (1772-1834), Letters of a British Spy (1803) 
II. Poetry 

John Trumbull (1750-1831), The Progress of Dulness (1772- 

1773), McFingal (i 775-1 782) 
Philip Freneau (1752-1832), Poems (1786; 1795; 1809) 
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), Columbia (1778), The Conquest 

of Canaan (1785), Greenfield Hill (1794) 
Joel Barlow (1754-1812), The Vision of Columbus (1787), later 

extended into The Columbiad (1807), Hasty Pudding (1793) 
Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), The Battle of the Kegs (1777) 
Joseph Hopkinson (1770-1842), Hail, Columbia (1798) 
ni. Fiction 

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810), Wieland (1798), Ormond 

(1799), Arthur Mervyn (1800), Edgar Huntley (1801), Clara 

Howard (1801), Jane Talbot (1804) 

III. PERIOD OF ARTISTIC OR CREATIVE 
LITERATURE, 1800-1900 

The nineteenth century may be said to mark the beginning of creative 
literature in America. Hardly anything which precedes the year 1800 
has a purely artistic value. The surviving literature of our first 
two centuries is now read more for its antique or historical flavor than- 
for any permanent literary power which it possesses. No single poem 
or work of creative art rises to a commanding height, and the one 
prose classic of the two earlier periods that is still widely read, Franklin's 
Autobiography, though translated into the French by some unknown 
hand in 1791 and retranslated into English in 1793, was not printed 
from Franklin's own manuscript until 181 7, and even then not in an 
accurate and complete form. Charles Brockden Brown began to 
write creative prose just at the turn of the century, Irving's fame 
crossed the Atlantic in the second decade, and with his work and 
the romances of Cooper, the poems of Bryant, and the poems and 
tales of Foe, American literature for the first time may be said to have 
entered upon an artistic or creative period. The chief schools and 
movements have revolved pretty definitely around the Middle Atlantic 
States with New York as the center; New England with Boston and its 



American Literary Readings 



641 



environs as the center ; and the larger aspects of the more strictly 
national or democratic movements and the development of the literature 
of locality have been widely diffused over the West and the South. 
Hence our chief authors may be readily grouped in four divisions. We 
can only mention the more prominent writers here, trusting that the 
student will consult the biographical sketches scattered through this 
volume and, as his interests and reading broaden, the general reference 
books and histories of our literature which are everywhere accessible. 



MAJOR WRITERS 

I. New York and Middle States Group 



MINOR WRITERS 



n. 



Washington Irving (i 783-1 859) 
James Fenimore Cooper (1789- 

1851) 
William CuUen Bryant (1794- 

1878) 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) 



New England Group 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 

1882) 
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 

1864) 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

(1807-1882) 
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 

1892) 
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809- 

1894) 
Henrv David Thoreau (1817- 

1862) 
James Russell Lowell (1819- 

1891) 



Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790- 

1867) 
Joseph Rodman Drake (1795- 

1820) 
Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806- 

1867) 
George W. Curtis (1824-1892) 
Bayard Taylor (i 825-1 878) 
Charles Dudley Warner 

(1 829- 1900) 
Edmund Clarence Stedman 

(1833-1908) 
Frank R. Stockton (1834- 

1902) 
S. Weir Mitchell (1829-19 14) 
John Burroughs (1837 — ) 
F. Marion Crawford (1854- 

1909) 
Richard Watson Gilder (1844- 

1909) 
Owen Wister (i860—) 
Stephen Crane (i 870-1900) 
Richard Harding Da\is 

(1864-1916) 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852) 
William H. Prescott (,1796- 

1859) 
Harriet Beecher Stowe (rSii- 

1896) 
John Lothrop Motley (1814- 

1877) 
Francis Parkman (1823-1893) 
Louisa M. Alcott (1832-1888) 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836- 

1907) 
William Dean Howells (1837 — ) 
Henry James, Jr. (1843-1915) 
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849- 

1909) 
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman 

fi862— ) 



642 



An Outline of American Literature 



MAJOR WRITERS 

in. Southern Group 

Edgar Allan Poe (i 809-1 849) 
Henry Timrod (i 829-1 867) 
Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830- 

1886) 
Sidney Lanier (i 842-1 881) 
Joel Chandler Harris (1848- 

1908) 
O. Henry (William Sydney 

Porter) (1862-1910) 



IV. Central and Western Group 

Mark Twain (Samuel L. 

Clemens) (i 835-1910) 
Bret Harte (i 839-1 902) 
Joaquin Miller (i 842-1913) 
James Whitcomb Riley (1849- 

1916) 
William Vaughn Moody(i869- 

1910) 



MINOR WRITERS 

John Pendleton Kennedy 

(1795-1870) 
William Gilmore Simms 

(1806- 1 8 70) 
Richard Malcolm Johnston 

(1822-1898) 
Abram J. (Father) Ryan 

( 1 839-1886) 
John EstenCooke ( 1 830- 1886) 
F. Hopkinson Smith (1838- 

1916) 
George W. Cable (1844—) 
James Lane Allen ( 1 849 — ) 
Charles Egbert Craddock 

(MaryN.Murfree) (1850 — ) 
Irwin Russell (i 853-1 879) 
Thomas Nelsor Page (1853 — ) 
Madison J. Cawein (1865-, 

1914) 
Cale Young Rice (1872 — ) 



Abraham Lincoln (i 809-1 865) 
Lew Wallace (182 7- 1905) 
Edward Eggleston (1837- 

1902) 
John Hay (i 838-1905) 
"Edward Rowland Sill (1841- 

1887) 
Maurice Thompson (1844- 

1901) 
Eugene Field (1850-1895) 
Edwin Markham (1852 — ) 
Winston Churchill (1871 — ) 
Frank Norris (1870-1902) 



A BRIEF ESSAY ON ENGLISH METRICS 

Rhythm. Poetry is written in measured rhythmical language. 
Meter means primarily measure; and rhythm means wave movement. 
A line of poetry, technically called a verse, is composed of individual 
wave movements which are called feet. In English poetry there are 
four basal rhythms or types of wave movement, namely, the iambic, 
the anapestic, the trochaic, the dactylic. The first two of these are 
called rising rhythms because they begin with an unstressed syllable 
and close with a stressed syllable, the iambic foot (— /) being com- 
posed of one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable, and the 
anapest (^ ^ /) being composed of two unstressed syllables and one 
stressed syllable. The other two basal rhythms are called falling because 
they begin with stressed syllables and close with unstressed syllables, 
the trochee (/ •--) being composed of one stressed and one unstressed 
syllable, and the dactyl (/ -^ ^) being composed of one stressed and 
two unstressed syllables. In addition to these basal rhythms we have 
two level or even rhythms which are sometimes substituted in a single 
foot for one of the regular types of rhythm in order to prevent monot- 
ony and add variety to the flow of the verse. The level or even 
rhythms are the pyrrhic (-^ --), composed of two light syllables, one 
of them 'taking a slight metrical : stress according to the prevailing 

rhythm of the verse; and spondaic ( ), composed of two heavy or 

stressed syllables, one of them taking a slightly stronger stress than 
the other according to the prevailing type of rhythm employed. Both 
types of level stress may be illustrated by the verse. 

By the | rude bridge | that arched 1 the flood. 

The first foot is a pyrrhic, the second a spondee, and the third and 
fourth iambs. The even rhythms are sometimes spoken of as having 
divided or hovering stress, the voice, as it were, hovering over the two 
syllables or being evenly divided between them. 

vSummarizing, then, we find four fundamental types of rhythm and 
two occasional types of level or even rhythm, as follows: 

RISING RHYTHMS FALLING RHYTHMS 

Iambic (-' '), as compose Trochaic (/ --), as lily 

Anapestic {-' — /), as undefiled Dactylic (/ ■— — ), as whispering 

LEVEL RHYTHMS 

Pyrrhic (^ — ), as by the 
Spondaic ( ), as rude bridge 

Pauses. Pauses frequently occur as a part of the rhythm of the 
verse, and sometimes they become an organic part of the verse structure, 
occurring at regular intervals throughout the lines. When a pause 

643 



644 ^ Brief Essay on English Metrics 

occurs within the verse, or Hne, it is called a medial or cesural pause. 
In the longer meters the cesural pause becomes organic, but in the 
shorter meters there is rarely a medial pause. If a natural rhetorical 
pause occurs at the end of a line, in which case it is usually, though not 
always, marked by some sign of punctuation, the line is said to be 
end-stopped. If no pause occurs at the end of the line, the line is said 
to be run-on; and in reading, the voice should be carried over to the 
next line with but the slightest break. Sometimes a pause occurs to 
take the place of an omitted syllable, or even to fill the time of several 
feet, and in such cases it is called a compensating pause. The following 
passages will illustrate the various kinds of pauses. 

For the moon | never beams, |1 without bring | ing me dreams | 

(medial pause) (run-on Hne) 

Of my beau 1 tiful An | nabel Lee; || (end-stopped line) 

'Twas down, I a down, | straight down; 
(compensating pause) 

The breakers whisper under their breath 1 1 (end-stopped line) 
/> "Death, I a Death!" 
(compensating pauses) 

Substitution and inversion. Another kind of irregularity frequently 
practiced by poets in order to give variety to the rhythm is the sub- 
stitution of one type of foot for another. Either one of the rising 
rhythms may be freely substituted for the other, or either one of the 
falling rhythms may be substituted for the other, as iambic for ana- 
pestic, or trochaic for dactylic. If opposite types, that is a rising for 
a falling rhythm or vice versa, are substituted, as when a trochaic foot 
is used for an iambic, or a dactylic foot for an anapestic, or vice versa, 
the irregularity is called inversion. The first foot in the following 
quotation is an example of inversion. 

Lifeless, | but beau | tiful, | he lay. 

Inversion occurs almost invariably at the beginning of a line or imme- 
diately after a medial pause. 

Anacrusis and catalexis. Occasionally an extra or hypermetrical 
light syllable is added at the beginning of a trochaic or dactylic line. 
This is called anacrusis. It occurs rarely, and will give the pupil little 
trouble. An example may be seen in the following trochaic line: 

And I all with | pearl and | ruby | glowing. 

Here the and may be disregarded in maiking the scansion. Some- 
times also the final syllable, or syllables, of trochaic or dactylic verse is 
omitted or cut off. This is called catalexis, and a verse which shows 
this irregularity is called catalectic. Catalexis occurs very frequently 
in trochaic tetrameter and makes what is sometimes called heptasyllabic 
(seven-syllabled) verse. The reason catale.xis occurs so frequently 
in English trochaic rhythm is that the feminine rimes are sometimes 
difficult to find. Examples of catalexis will be found in the quotations 
on pp. 645-646. 

Feminine ending. Another common variation is the addition of 
one or sometimes two unstressed syllables at the end of an iambic 
or anapestic foot. The addition occurs rarely just before a medial 
pause and frequently at the end of the line. When it occurs at the 



American Literary Readings 645 

end of the line, it is called feminine enaitig. The extra syllabic should 
not be counted as part of a new foot, but merely as an additional 
syllable in the foot to which it is attached. The following is an example 
of feminine ending: 

The day | is cold | and dark | and dreary 

Stress. Metrical stress is usually determined by the ordinary ety- 
mological pronunciation of the words. The three degrees of stress 
are denominated primary, secondary, and no-stress; these may all be 

illustrated in a single word, as ponderous, the primary stress being 
orduiarily marked by the acute accent (/), the secondary by the grave 
accent (\), and the light or no-stress syllable by the breve (^). In the 
following line the syllable in receives the secondary stress, the syllables 
fotind, fresh, do, and woods take the primary stress, and the remaining 
syllables are light or unstressed. 

I found I the fresh | Rhodo | ra in | the woods. 

Hovering or divided stress has already been explained under the terms 
pyrrhic and spondaic in the discussion of the various kinds of rhythm 
above. These stresses may be indicated by the double breve and 
double macron respectively, with a grave accent over the heavier 
syllable, as (-^ --) and (— — ). 

Wrenched accent. Ordinarily the regular prose or etymological 
pronunciation of the word determines its metrical pronunciation, but 
occasionally the metrical stress prevails over the word stress, and we 
have what is known as wrenched accent. An example of this may be 
found in "The Haunted Palace": 

In the greenest of our valleys 
/ 
By good angels tenan/ed, 

Once a fair and stately palace — • 

Radiant palace — reared its head. 

Here the syllable -ted in tenanted receives a primary instead of a second- 
ary accent in order to bring out clearly the rime with head. 

Sometimes syllables which are not pronounced or accented in prose 
take a light or even a secondary stress on account of the meter. The 
commonest example of this is the pronunciation of the final syllable -ed 
in such words as loved, winged, blessed. This is another case in which 
the metrical stress prevails over the ordinary pronunciation; and to 
make sure that the proper rhythmic pronunciation is given, the editors 
of most modern books mark such syllables with a grave accent, as loved. 

Slurring. Syllables are sometimes slurred or run together when 
two vowels are conjoined, as in ponderous, pronounced in two syllables. 
Slurring may also occur between words if one ends and the other begins 
with an open sound, as 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore 

Here many a is pronounced in two syllables, as if written manya. The 
two unaccented syllables in curious are pronounced very quickly, so 
as to consume the time of but one short syllable. Closely akin to 
slurring are the poetical contractions which are allowable in such 
words as e'en, e'er, o'er, and '/ is, for even, ever, over, and it is. On the 



646 A Brief Essay on English Metrics 

other hand some words may be pronounced as two syllables instead 
of one, such as real, fire, and the like, as in the following examples: 

Life is re-al, life is earnest 

In mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fi-re, 
Leaping higher, higher, high-er. 

Meter. The length of the line or verse, that is, the number of feet 
it contains, determines the meter. Lines range from one foot to eight, 
and are called, respectively, monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, 
pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, octameter; or one-stress, two- 
stress, etc. 

To designate the meter of a selection, the pupil should give the typical 
rhythm or kind of foot, the number of feet, and such irregularities 
as may be necessary to describe the verse adequately. The following 
list of typical meters is by no means exhaustive. 

(i) Anapestic monometer: 

They are Ghouls 

(2) Iambic dimeter: 

if I I co^ld dwell 
Where Is | ra fel 

(3) Iambic trimeter: 

That sailed | the win 1 try sea 

(4) Anapestic trimeter: 

'T is the part 1 of a cow | ard to brood 

(5) Iambic tetrameter with feminine ending: 

The day | is cold | and dark | and dreary 

(6) Anapestic tetrameter: 

O'er the land | of the free | and the home | of the brave 

(7) Trochaic tetrameter: 

Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers 

(8) Dactylic tetrameter catalectic: 

Merrily | swinging on | brier and | weed 

(9) Iambic pentameter, blank verse: 

To him I who in | the love | of Na | ture holds 

(10) Iambic pentameter, heroic couplet: 

— / -^ / / w ^ / _ >. 

Now far, | now near, || borne as | the soft | winds will. 
Comes the 1 low rush 1 ing of | the wa | ter-mill. 

(11) Dactylic hexameter, with cesural pause: 

This is the | forest pri | meval. || The | murmuring 1 pines and the | hemlocks 



Once up I on a | midnight | dreary, || while I | ponder'd | weak and | weary 



American Literary Readings 647 

(12) Iambic heptameter with medial pause: 

The mel | ancho | ly days | have come, 1 1 the sad | dest of | the year 

(13) Trochaic octameter with cesural pause and internal rime: 

Once up I on a | midnight | dr^ 

(14) Trochaic octameter catalectic: 

Over I many a | quaint and | curious | volume I of for | gotten | lore 

The longer meters, such as the heptameter, or seven-stress, and the 
octameter, or eight-stress, are frequently broken up into two verses, 
four-stress + three-stress, and four-stress + four-stress respectively. 
When broken in this way, the iambic heptameter gives the common 
ballad meter, as seen in the old Scottish ballad "Sir Patrick Spens" 
(p. 580), in "The Wreck of the Hesperus" (p. 262), and "In School- 
Days" (p. 299). 

Stanzas. The stanza (commonly but inaccurately called verse) is 
composed of any number of lines from two upward. Stanzas are 
described by giving the number of lines and by indicating the arrange- 
ment of the rimes. A two-line stanza is called a couplet, a three-line 
stanza a triplet or tercet, and a four-line stanza is frequently called 
a quatrain. We also have five-, six-, seven-, eight-, and nine-line 
stanzas. The Spenserian stanza is a nine-line stanza riming ababbcbcc, 
the first eight lines being iambic pentameter and the ninth line being 
iambic hexameter. No example of the Spenserian stanza occurs 
in this book. 

Sonnet. The sonnet is a poem consisting of fourteen lines of iambic 
five-stress verse, the rimes being arranged according to a definite, yet 
somewhat widely varying, scheme. This verse form was introduced 
from the Italian by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the sixteenth century, and 
under the improved forms practiced by his friend and co-author, Henry 
Howard, Earl of Surrey, the sonnet became extremely popular toward 
the end of the century. When the original Italian models are more 
or less closely followed, we have what is called the regular or Italian 
sonnet. This consists of an octave, or eight lines, usualh^ made up 
on two rime sounds, as abbaabba; and a sextet or six lines, usually 
arranged in two tercets, or three-line groups, on two or three rimes 
variously interlaced, as cde cde; cdc dcd, etc. Occasionally a third and 
even a fourth rime is introduced in the octave, and this leads to the 
English or irregular sonnet, sometimes called also the Shakespearean 
sonnet, because Shakespeare practiced this form exclusively. It con- 
sists of three quatrains with a final couplet, the rime scheme usually 
running abab, cdcd, efef, gg. 

Rime. Rime is one of the chief devices for binding or fixing the form 
of the stanza. If the rime follows in immediate sequence, we call it 
couplet, triplet, and so forth. Whittier's "MaudMuUcr" is written 
in couplets, and Longfellow's "Maidenhood" in triplets. When 
the rime occurs on every other line, we call it alternate, and when a 
quatrain shows the first and fourth lines riming and the second and 
third, we call this inclosed rime. The combinations and arrangements 
of rime schemes are so numerous that it is impossible to treat them 
here. As to form, rime is called masculine when only one syllable 
rimes, and feminine when two or more syllables rime. For example, 



648 ^ Brief Essay on English Metrics 

hand — land is- a masculine rime, while tender — slender and tenderly 
— slenderly are feminine rimes. When a word in the middle of a line 
rimes with another at or near the end of the line, we call this internal 
rime. Sometimes internal rime becomes organic; that is, it occurs 
regularly at certain places in the verse. An identical or perfect rime 
is the exact repetition of the sound of an entire syllable, including the 
initial consonant , as week — weak. This is usually considered a blemish, 
but it is sometimes permitted. A good method of indicating the rime 
scheme of a stanza is to write out a formula, using small letters for 
masculine rimes and capital letters for feminine rimes, as (i) trochaic 
tetrameter, AbAb ("A Psalm of Life"); (2) dactylic tetrameter 
catalectic, ababccdde ("Robert of Lincoln"); (3) anapestic trimeter, 
AbbAcAcAc ("Ulalume"); (4) iambic dimeter (i, 2, 4, 5) and trimeter 
(3, 6),aaBccB (" Eldorado") ; (5) iambic trimeter (1,4) and pentameter 
(2, z), abab ("To a Waterfowl"). 

Blank verse. Any verse which does not rime may be called blank, 
but the term blank verse is applied specifically to unrimed iambic 
pentameter, as in Bryant's "Thanatopsis." 






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